UPDATE: Bower was executed as scheduled. EARLIER: Lester Bower is scheduled to be executed in Texas on June 3, after spending more than 30 years on death row. Judges have denied relief on several issues raised by Bower, including a claim that prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense supporting Bower’s consistent assertion that he is innocent. Bower was convicted of the 1983 murder of four men in Grayson County, Texas. He says he met with one of the men to purchase an ultralight aircraft, which the others helped him disassemble and load into his truck. The evidence against him was circumstantial: calls made to the man selling the aircraft and Bower’s possession of the same type of ammunition used in the killings, which prosecutors had told the jury was extremely rare. After Bower’s conviction, his lawyers obtained records from the FBI and prosecutors indicating that the ammunition was not as rare as prosecutors had said, and of an undisclosed tip that the murders may have been connected to drug trafficking. Later, a woman came forward saying that her boyfriend and his friends had committed the murders after a drug deal went wrong. The wife of one of the other men corroborated her story. In a recent filing, Bower’s attorneys said, “This is a case in which there is a significant lingering doubt regarding guilt or innocence.” Three Supreme Court justices have said that Bower should have a new sentencing hearing, as a result of what they called a “glaring” constitutional error that impaired the jury’s consideration of mitigating evidence.
(J. Smith, “DOUBTS STILL PLAGUE THE 31-YEAR-OLD LESTER BOWER CASE BUT TEXAS IS ABOUT TO KILL HIM ANYWAY,” The Intercept, June 1, 2015; M. Berman, “Texas plans to execute an inmate who has been on death row for 30 years,” Washington Post, June 2, 2015.) See Innocence and Time on Death Row.
