November 20, 2005
Debra Saunders
The San Fransisco Chronicle
Clarence Ray Allen provides the strongest argument I've seen for the death penalty. Allen is slated to be executed on Jan. 17. He ordered the death of several witnesses who had testified against him from prison while he was serving a sentence of life without parole for the murder of another witness. As a result, three innocent people are dead. They've been dead for 25 years.
"This is probably the paradigm of a death-penalty case, in which really no lesser punishment would be appropriate," noted state Deputy Attorney General Ward Campbell last week.
The ugly saga starts in 1974. Allen owned a security company. According to court documents, he enlisted the help of his own son Roger and two employees to rob Fran's Market, a store east of Fresno owned by the Schletewitz family, whom Allen had known for years.
Roger Allen invited the Schletewitz son, Bryon, to a party. While Bryon was swimming, someone took his keys. The Allen gang robbed the store. Later, Roger's 17-year-old girlfriend, Mary Sue Kitts, confessed to Bryon that she helped cash money orders stolen from the market.
Bryon confronted Roger Allen and also confirmed that Kitts had told him what happened.
Clarence Ray Allen then ordered that Kitts be murdered. Between threatening phone calls from Allen, an accomplice strangled the poor girl. When Bryon learned Kitts was missing, he went to authorities.
After a 1977 trial, a jury convicted Allen of burglary, conspiracy and first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life without parole.
In Folsom State Prison, Allen cooked up a scheme to kill the witnesses who testified against him so that he could appeal his conviction and then be freed because any witnesses were dead -- or scared silent. After Allen's buddy, Billy Ray Hamilton, was paroled, Allen's other son supplied Hamilton with guns and ammo.
Accompanied by a girlfriend, Hamilton visited Fran's Market, brandished a sawed-off shotgun and led Bryon and other employees into the stockroom as he searched for a safe. As the Fresno Bee reported, Hamilton shot Bryon to death.
He killed Douglas White, 18. Then he shot a crying Josephine Rocha, 17, through the heart, lung and stomach.
"When you hear the details, it's hard," Teresa Daniele, Rocha's big sister, told me over the phone. Some 25 years later, "it's still very raw." Hamilton also shot a 17-year-old clerk, who was left for dead but miraculously survived, and a neighbor who heard the shotgun blasts and went to investigate. After being shot, the neighbor then shot Hamilton.
Days later, a wounded Hamilton was arrested while robbing a liquor store. Police found a list of names and information for eight people who had testified against Allen, including Bryon Schletewitz and his father, Ray Schletewitz.
In 1982, a jury convicted Allen and sentenced him to Death Row. (A jury also sent Hamilton to Death Row.) The evidence had been overwhelming. As U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote in a three-judge Ninth Circuit court decision that rejected Allen's appeal, the most damning evidence "came directly from Allen."
First, there was the list and the fact that Allen's son helped Hamilton. Then, there was the fact that Allen had been vocal in letting people know he would kill any "rat." As Wardlaw wrote: "By committing a capital crime while having already been maximally punished and while behind walls thought to protect society, Allen has proven that he is beyond redemption and that he will continue to pose a threat to society."
And: Allen "has shown himself more than capable of arranging murders from behind bars. If the death penalty is to serve any purpose at all, it is to prevent the very sort of murderous conduct for which Allen was convicted."
While Allen showed no mercy for his victims, the system has been quite kind to Allen. Three execution dates were set -- then stayed. In September, Allen had a heart attack, then angioplasty. With his execution looming, he may yet have open-heart surgery.
Now, his attorney, Michael Satris, is using Allen's old age -- which his victims failed to attain -- and poor health as a reason to put off the execution. I kid you not. Satris argued: "Allen's health is too fragile for the setting of an execution date at this time because of the risk that the setting of a date and the procedures that will attend such will cause him to have a heart attack."
Meanwhile, the families of his victims are dying off. Allen has outlived Josephine's father, Joseph Rocha, and Douglas White's brother, George. I'm told that the Kitt parents are dead. Bryon's mother, Fran, died in 2002. His father wanted to witness Allen's execution, but died in March. Bryon's sister is the only surviving member of the family. She wants to see justice done.
If Allen is executed as scheduled, the sister, Patricia Pendergrass, told me, "there finally will be truth in sentencing, even though so many years have passed." She thinks of the "very vicious, cruel death" forced upon Bryon and Josephine and Douglas, and sees Allen's execution as infinitely kinder.
If the state can't execute a man who has killed innocent people from prison while serving a life sentence without parole for murder, then no one is safe.
Except Clarence Ray Allen.
Copyright 2005 Creators Syndicate
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