This undated file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows death row inmate Thomas Whitaker
Days after a Texas father pleaded the state to spare the life of his son, who slaughtered his youngest son and wife in 2003, the man has been granted clemency.
Death row inmate Thomas ‘Bart’ Whitaker was put on death row after being convicted of masterminding a deadly 2003 plot near Houston that left his mother Tricia, 51, and brother Kevin, 19, dead, and his father Kent with a gun wound to the chest.
But on Tuesday, two days before the scheduled execution, the 38-year-old received an unanimous clemency recommendation.
Kent broke down in tears when he heard that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles gave what amounted to its first clemency recommendation to come primarily at the request of a victim’s forgiving family.
‘Victim’s rights should mean something in this state even when the victim is asking for mercy and not vengeance,’ Kent said later during a news conference.
Days after Texas father Kent Whitaker pleaded the state to spare the life of his son, who slaughtered his youngest son and wife in 2003, the man has been granted clemency
Death row inmate Thomas ‘Bart’ Whitaker (left) was put on death row after being convicted of masterminding a deadly 2003 plot near Houston that left his mother Tricia (center right), 51, and brother Kevin (right), 19, dead, and his father Kent with a gun wound to the chest
Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, will make the final decision on whether to dispense a life sentence and halt the scheduled execution by lethal injection planned for Thursday.
Kent, a 69-year-old devout Christian and retired construction company executive, has said if the death penalty is implemented, it would only intensify his pain.
According to the clemency petition Whitaker, his relatives and his wife’s family do not want Texas to execute Bart.
In the petition he also recalled lying in his hospital bed and facing the choice of slipping into despair or offering his son forgiveness. He said his faith led him to the latter option.
But on Tuesday, two days before the scheduled execution, the 38-year-old received an unanimous clemency recommendation on Tuesday. Bart and Kent are pictured together in a 2016 staff photo
Kent broke down in tears when he heard that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles gave what amounted to its first clemency recommendation to come primarily at the request of a victim’s forgiving family
Kent Whitaker said his son has been a model inmate and has provided letters from death row prison guards to back him up. According to the clemency petition, Kent Whitaker, his relatives and his wife’s family do not want Texas to execute Bart.
In a shocking clemency letter first seen on the American-Statesman in January, Mr Whitaker, 69, revealed he cannot bear to see the life of another loved one be taken from him.
‘I have seen too much killing already… I don’t want to see him executed right there in front of my eyes,’ the lone father said, who is left with the horrific memory of his family who fell dead in front of his eyes.
‘I know Tricia and Kevin would not want him to be executed. I can’t imagine seeing the last living part of my family executed by the state, especially since all the victims didn’t want that to happen in the first place,’ he said, solemnly.
Mr Whitaker attended a 30-minute meeting chairman of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles in Austin concerning whether his son would be able to serve life in prison rather than being executed
Money may have motivated Bart Whitaker to plan to murder his family with the help of two other men, court documents showed.
Kent suggests that his son (pictured) has turned his life around while in prison since the horrific murder nearly two decades ago
One of those men, his roommate Chris Brashear, shot the father, mother and brother after the family returned from a dinner out.
He shot Bart in the bicep to make it look he had also been attacked. The two other men helped prosecutors pin the crime on Whitaker and were not sentenced to death. Neither co-defendant received the death penalty.
Local prosecutors said they considered the family’s views but stood by Whitaker’s sentence as appropriate for such a brutal crime.
‘Legally, justice says that he should be executed,’ Fred Felcman, first assistant district attorney for the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office said in an interview last week.
In the online clemency plea on behalf of Whitaker, the board to Governor Greg Abbott detail his request for the lesser penalty of a lifelong sentence.
‘This case in unique. Kent Whitaker was almost murdered during the same ambush that took the life of Kent’s wife, Patricia, and son, Kevin.
Only hours after this happy family photo was taken, the man on the left, Thomas Whitaker, had his brother Kevin (pictured on the right) murdered by one of his friends
Kent is pictured with his new wife above. The last sounds of his ex-wife and killer’s mom, Tricia, were a series of weak, wet coughs as blood filled her lungs
‘I know Tricia and Kevin would not want him to be executed,’ Kent said in the powerful clemency letter
‘There is only one person on Earth who is intimate with the murderous attack, the lives and deaths of the other victims, and the life of Thomas Whitaker – Mr. Whitaker’s father, Kent,’ the powerful, 19 page letter first reads.
‘He speaks to clemency with a moral force and detail of experience that no district attorney or judge or anyone can possess.’
In the letter, Mr Whitaker makes a point to suggest that his son – who he often visited in prison – has turned his life around since the decades-old horrific murder.
He also wrote that he believes Thomas also has a mental illness that was never formally diagnosed.