Judge Halts Siripongs’ Execution in Last Hours

A federal judge unexpectedly halted the execution of a former Buddhist monk Monday night, less than six hours before he was to die by lethal injection for robbing and murdering a Garden Grove market owner and a clerk in 1981.

Prosecutors immediately filed an appeal in hopes of overturning the judge’s stay, allowing the execution to occur on schedule. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote, denied the state’s request to lift the stay of execution late Monday night. Prosecutors are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the high court lifts the stay, the execution could occur any time today because the state’s death warrant is valid for 24 hours.

The reprieve is the latest chapter in the 17-year legal saga of Jaturun Siripongs, 36, who was to become the sixth man executed since California reinstituted the death penalty two decades ago.

But U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order to consider the appeal by Siripongs’ attorneys. They argued in a claim filed early Monday that Gov. Pete Wilson’s denial of clemency last week violated Siripongs’ civil rights.

Defense attorneys said the governor’s office asked them to submit only information on Siripongs’ background and prison behavior and to leave out information about the initial investigation and court case as part of Wilson’s clemency review.

Chesney said Wilson’s office may have misled Siripongs’ lawyers about what information Wilson would consider in deciding whether to reduce his sentence to life without parole. Chesney’s restraining order allows her time to decide whether Wilson must reconsider clemency.

Wilson spokesman Ron Low called Chesney’s ruling “clearly flawed,” adding: “The governor did not limit the material that [defense attorneys] could send him, and when they did, there was a thorough and complete analysis of the clemency materials.”

Efforts to spare Siripongs’ life were supported by several unlikely sources, including a former San Quentin prison warden and two former jurors who recommended the death penalty. The husband of one of the victims, a Buddhist who opposes capital punishment, also asked that the death sentence be commuted.

None of the four supporters contested Siripongs’ guilt for the killings but said his sentence should be reduced to life in prison because of his exemplary prison record and because of his difficult childhood in his native country.

Inside the prison, Siripongs met throughout the afternoon with relatives and his attorneys. A brother, a sister, an uncle, a cousin, his mother and his three lawyers left at about 5:45 p.m., according to state Department of Corrections spokesman Tipton Kindel said.

Shortly after, Siripongs was told of the judge’s decision to stay the execution. He smiled, thanking his attorneys, Kindel said.

At about 6:30 p.m., Siripongs was moved to the death-watch cell a few feet from the converted gas chamber to await his fate, Kindel said. About an hour later he ate a last meal of papaya slices, grapes, green melon soup, dim sum, including pork buns, a six pack of Pepsi and strawberry sherbet, Kindel said.

Meanwhile, outside the gates of San Quentin on the shores of San Francisco Bay, about 200 opponents of capital punishment gathered in the hours leading up to the scheduled hour of execution.

The late stay reminded some protesters of the 1992 execution of killer Robert Alton Harris, which was delayed for hours by a last-minute flurry of appeals.

“It would be kind of pie in the sky to say ‘let’s go home tonight,’ ” said activist J.D. Benson. “We are here for the duration.”

As they have in preparation for previous executions at San Quentin, authorities tightened security at the prison and the surrounding area Monday. Prisoners’ recreation times were canceled. Freeway off-ramps into San Quentin were closed. Roads into San Quentin village, a bay-side hamlet beside the prison, were blocked. Sheriff’s deputies, correctional officers and highway patrol officers were stationed in and around the prison grounds, some in riot gear.

Siripongs was raised in a brothel in Thailand after his parents separated. He was convicted there for participating in a burglary of a department store and served time in a Thai prison. Later, he was initiated as a Buddhist monk.

“We have a tremendous injustice happening here,” Linda Schilling, one of Siripongs’ attorneys, said. “We have a man who by everyone’s account uniformly says he should not be executed. He has an unblemished prison record. We have the victim’s families saying that we have come to closure. Healing has happened in this case. . . . Under all those circumstances, it is inconceivable to me why the governor has decided that clemency is not appropriate in this case.”

But prosecutors have called the evidence against Siripongs overwhelming and his acts callous.

“The punishment fits the crime,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Laura Halgren. “Siripongs acted in a deliberate and coldhearted fashion to kill two innocent people, basically for greed.”

Wilson had written in his decision that there was no compelling reason to spare the life of Siripongs, who had expressed remorse for the crimes years ago but who never admitted to them.

Siripongs’ legal journey began with his conviction for the strangling of store owner Packovan “Pat” Wattanaporn and the stabbing of clerk Quach Nguyen during a robbery at Pantai market in Garden Grove, where Siripongs had worked.

Schilling pressed the case for years in a series of appeals, arguing that Siripongs did not receive an adequate defense during the original trial in 1983. She said that Siripongs admitted participating in the robbery, but that an accomplice killed the victims.

Siripongs has refused to name the alleged accomplice, and every court that considered the case affirmed the guilty verdict and death penalty.

Inmates and wardens described him as a gentle man who prayed every day and painted pictures of his native Thailand in his cell. Siripongs met with his attorneys and with his sister and brother on Monday. The siblings have been visiting him every day since last week.

The families of the victims, Buddhists like Siripongs, have been ambivalent about the use of the death penalty from the beginning. Reflecting his religion’s emphasis on mercy over revenge, Surachai Wattanaporn, the husband of the slain store owner, joined the Thai government in a plea to Wilson for clemency.

“Something of that magnitude, it changes your life,” Wattanaporn said last week. “But as time goes by, you have to overcome the difficult times, get over those feelings.”

Siripongs was 26 years old and had lived in the United States for about a year when he robbed the Pantai Market on the afternoon of Dec. 15, 1981. The Wattanaporns ran an import-export jewelry business out of the market. They had earlier given Siripongs a part-time job cleaning floors.

Prosecutors say Siripongs strangled Packovan Wattanaporn using a nylon cord. He stabbed Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant and father of four, several times in the head and neck. Nguyen’s body was found with the cord wrapped around his arm. Cuts on Siripongs’ hands after the robbery suggested to police that Nguyen mounted a fierce struggle.

Surachai Wattanaporn found the bodies a few hours later lying face down in a puddle of blood in the store’s storage room.

Police arrested Siripongs two days later when he tried to purchase a television set with Wattanaporn’s credit card. At the trial, prosecutors submitted more than 100 items of evidence, much of it found in a trash bin near the Cerritos home of a friend of Siripongs. The items included Packovan Wattanaporn’s wallet and purse, a pair of bloodstained shoes in Siripongs’ size and a bloody kitchen knife.

At Siripongs’ home in Hawthorne, police found Packovan Wattanaporn’s jewelry and several credit card receipts forged with the grocery store owner’s signature. Jewelry worth more than $20,000 that belonged to Wattanaporn was eventually traced to Siripongs.