Death Watch: Execution Stalled for Death Row Inmate Turned Preacher

The life and ministry of death row inmate Will Speer will continue, for the moment. The inmate coordinator of a new prison initiative that promotes healing and redemption on death row, and the subject of a recent Chronicle profile ("Saving Body and Soul," News, Oct. 13), Speer was scheduled for execution on Oct. 26. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped the execution with five hours to spare to allow the court to consider an appeal from his attorneys.

The appeal alleges that prosecutors at his 1997 murder trial withheld evidence and presented false testimony. It also argues that his defense attorneys did a poor job by failing to present evidence of the abuse Speer endured throughout his childhood, evidence that could have persuaded his jury to give him life without parole instead of death. The CCA's stay of execution did not evaluate Speer's arguments and didn't state when a further ruling can be expected, but Speer can't be rescheduled for execution for at least 90 days.

"We are relieved that Will Speer will live to see another day so he can continue to spread his message of hope and healing in Texas prisons," said Amy Fly, one of Speer's attorneys. "We are grateful for the thousands of people ... who told the State of Texas that Will's life was worth saving." (Several thousand people have signed an Action Network petition to stop Speer's execution.)

Among the thousands supporting Speer are faith leaders and the surviving relatives of the two men Speer killed. Sammie Gail Martin, the sister of Gary Dickerson, who was murdered by Speer in 1997, asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute Speer' sentence to life without parole. "In my heart, I feel that he is not only remorseful for his actions but has been doing good works for others and has something left to offer the world," Martin wrote. Despite the outpouring of support, BPP voted unanimously to deny clemency.

With Speer's execution halted, Texas will next attempt to kill Brent Brewer on Nov. 9 for a murder that occurred over 33 years ago – his killing of Robert Laminack in Amarillo in 1990. Brewer was 19 years old and homeless at the time of the murder and had just been released from a mental institution. His defense at trial was substandard, his current attorneys say, and his jury decided he was irredeemable after learning almost nothing about him, aside from his crime.

And in fact, Brewer has been declared irredeemable twice, once in 1991 and again 18 years later, at a 2009 resentencing trial. Each time, an Austin doctor – Richard Coons – took the stand to swear that Brewer would be dangerous for the rest of his life. A 2022 appeal filed on behalf of Brewer described Coons as "one of the most discredited and notorious forensic experts in the state of Texas. ... [His] so-called methodology for assessing whether a person poses a future danger has been deemed inadmissible in Texas because it is scientifically unreliable and inaccurate." The appeal says that in 2009, as in 1991, Coons had "never laid eyes on Brent" outside of a courtroom. It claims he never conducted a forensic evaluation and only knew what the state had provided him about the crime.

Coons doubled down on his prediction in 2009, even though, by that point, Brewer had spent 18 peaceful years on death row. The next year, Coons lost his decades-long prognostication gig when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that his predictions were scientifically baseless.