Kirkpatrick Files Appeal to Delay Execution

One week before he is scheduled to die by lethal injection, convicted murderer William Kirkpatrick on Thursday backed away from his defiant demand that he be put to death, launching a last-minute appeal in federal court and proclaiming his innocence.

Kirkpatrick, who last year admitted guilt and demanded an execution date in a profanity-laced letter to the U.S. Supreme Court, denied in legal papers filed Thursday that he murdered two young men in a robbery at a Burbank Taco Bell in 1983.

In a declaration filed in Los Angeles District Court, Kirkpatrick, 35, asks for a 45-day stay of execution and for new lawyers to help him fight his case in the federal courts, contending his previous lawyers “refused to investigate adequately my claim of innocence as well as other important constitutional claims.”

Kirkpatrick is scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. next Friday, becoming the first California inmate to be executed by lethal injection. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider Kirkpatrick’s case, but prisoners who file federal appeals generally are granted automatic stays.

U.S. District Judge William Keller may rule on Kirkpatrick’s request as early as today.

Kirkpatrick’s decision to pursue an appeal surprised many. In recent months, he has refused to speak to his court-appointed lawyer--Ed Horowitz of Brentwood--or open his mail. He even refused in recent months to meet with representatives from the California Appellate Project, the nonprofit group that helped Kirkpatrick prepare Thursday’s declaration.

In letters to the U.S. Supreme Court, Kirkpatrick referred to various lawyers from the Appellate Project as a “cockroach,” a “bitch” and an “animal.” He complained that some lawyers would not let him die, even though he stabbed one 17 times with a sharpened toothbrush in a prison conference.

He described Horowitz, who said Thursday he expects to be removed from the case, as a “clown.”

Kirkpatrick also wrote in a July letter to the high court that he was “guilty as s---! I have no remorse! Give me my execution date and kill me!”

In Thursday’s declaration though, Kirkpatrick wrote that he had “grown increasingly frustrated over the years and have been left with no choice but to lash out verbally in order to gain the courts’ attention to my plight.”

Horowitz agreed Thursday that Kirkpatrick was reacting in his letters to a frustrating situation in which he did not feel he was being represented properly. “I think we all have to put ourselves in the position of a person who basically has been in solitary confinement for years,” he said.

“He has a natural suspicion of attorneys, but Dickens and Shakespeare wrote the same kind of stuff.”

Kirkpatrick was convicted and sentenced to death in 1984 for the 1983 murder of Wayne Hunter and James Falconio, two employees of a Taco Bell where Kirkpatrick once worked. Kirkpatrick shot both men in the head after stealing about $625 from the cash register and safe.

Hunter was found dead by customers and Falconio died of his wounds 11 days later.

As in previous legal efforts, Kirkpatrick is asking to represent himself in federal court, but to be supplied with outside lawyers to help him investigate and prepare his case. During the penalty phase of his initial trial, Kirkpatrick questioned witnesses and made statements to the jury in his own defense.

His distrust of lawyers is long-standing. In his declaration, Kirkpatrick contended that Horowitz had filed appeals on his behalf without permission and did not keep him apprised of his current status.

No sooner had Kirkpatrick’s writ been filed than state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren attacked the move as a political ploy by the California Appellate Project. He contended that lawyers from the group gave Kirkpatrick a variety of gifts, such as tobacco, shower slippers, a wristwatch, sunglasses and a sweatsuit.

“These gifts, apparently given to encourage an inmate to change his strategy for legal defense, sound more like taxpayer-financed political activism than legal advocacy,” Lungren said in a prepared statement.

He continued: “I can only wonder what outcry would be sparked if similar actions were taken by my office, or any prosecutor’s office, to persuade a convicted criminal to change his legal defense strategy by giving him gifts.”

The California Appellate Project, which was established by the State Bar of California to guarantee death row inmates adequate legal representation, called Lungren’s statement “inaccurate” and “innuendo-filled.”

“Mr. Kirkpatrick’s decision to go forward with his case was not in exchange for any gifts or other promises,” the project said in a prepared statement. “It is insulting to Mr. Kirkpatrick to suggest that he is seeking federal review of his death sentence only because he was given a few personal items.”

* NO REGRETS: Judge who sentenced killer in ’83 says it’s about time. B1