Kenneth Granviel was executed in Texas on February 27, 1996, for the death of a two-year-old girl, Natasha McClendon, in Fort Worth in October 1974. The conviction that sent him to the execution chamber was a single one. On the day he gave himself up to the police, February 8, 1975, he confessed to seven killings in two separate events: five members of one family in October 1974, and two women in February 1975. The courts that reviewed his case treated all seven deaths as part of his history, but the capital conviction rested on one victim, the youngest.
The case ran for more than twenty years through state and federal courts. A jury sentenced him to death in October 1975. A federal appeals court set that sentence aside in 1981 because a prospective juror had been wrongly excluded for his views on capital punishment. Granviel was tried again in 1983, convicted again and sentenced to death again. His execution was set for July 1990 and again for June 1992; the second date was halted by the United States Supreme Court only hours before it was to take place. The sentence was finally carried out in 1996.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals set out the facts in its 1976 opinion. On October 7, 1974, in Tarrant County, five members of one family died in Fort Worth: Laura McClendon; her sister Martha McClendon; a cousin, Linda McClendon; Martha's two-year-old daughter, Natasha; and Laura's young son. They were two sisters, their cousin, a mother and her daughter, and a mother and her son. Granviel was known to the family.
United Press International, reporting in 1992, described the victims as Natasha, her mother, two aunts and a three-year-old cousin. That account differs from the court's record on the identity and age of the fifth victim. The court's opinion lists Laura's son, described as a young boy.
Little else about the lives of the victims is on record. They were a family of women and children, two sisters, a cousin and their children, lost in a single evening. Natasha was two years old.
On February 8, 1975, two women died in Fort Worth: Betty Williams, a visitor, and Vera Hill, the woman Granviel lived with.
The same day another woman was harmed. She survived. Granviel then went to the police, accompanied by a minister, and made statements about both events.
Granviel went to a police station on February 8, 1975, asked to speak with an officer and confessed orally. His statement was typed and he signed it. Later federal opinions describe it as a confession to seven murders: six women and a two-year-old child, in the Fifth Circuit's wording in 1989, or five women and two girls in the wording of a 1992 news report. The courts' own listing of the victims in the 1976 opinion names five people in the first event and two in the second, a total of seven.
Granviel was appointed counsel on February 13, 1975. In its later review of the confession, the Court of Criminal Appeals found that it had been volunteered and that any request for a lawyer had been followed either by a fresh start from Granviel himself or by no further questioning.
Granviel was indicted in February 1975. The case that went to trial was the capital murder of Natasha McClendon, charged together with other offenses; the opinions refer to other indictments arising from the same events. The trial began on October 6, 1975, in the 213th Judicial District Court of Tarrant County.
His only defense was insanity. A psychiatrist retained by his lawyer, John Holbrook, examined him with counsel present; the court later appointed the same psychiatrist as its own expert, and the State called him. Holbrook testified that Granviel was not psychotic and was legally sane at the time of the offenses. The State's other appointed psychiatrists could not complete an examination because Granviel would not cooperate without his lawyer present. A defense psychologist had diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. The jury convicted Granviel of capital murder and answered the Texas special issues so that the sentence was death.
The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence on November 10, 1976, in Granviel v. State, 552 S.W.2d 107, over challenges to the death penalty statute, the indictment and the exclusion of prospective jurors. The Supreme Court of the United States denied review on May 23, 1977. In February 1978, in Ex parte Granviel, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied a state habeas petition that attacked the death sentence and the state's 1977 execution statute.
Granviel then turned to the federal courts. A habeas petition filed in the Southern District of Texas was transferred to the Northern District, Fort Worth Division, which denied it. On September 11, 1981, the Fifth Circuit, in Granviel v. Estelle, 655 F.2d 673, found one error and set the death sentence aside. A prospective juror had been excluded for cause although his answers did not show that he would automatically vote against death or that he could not judge guilt fairly, which the Supreme Court's decision in Witherspoon v. Illinois forbids. Because Texas had no contemporaneous-objection rule at the time of trial, the failure of Granviel's lawyer to object did not waive the point.
The court rejected the other claims: that the sentencing statute kept the jury from weighing his mental condition, that the psychiatrist's testimony violated the attorney-client privilege or his right to counsel, and that hospital records had been admitted in violation of his right of confrontation. Judge Hunter dissented on the juror question and would have dismissed the petition altogether. The panel ordered that Texas must either hold a new sentencing proceeding or vacate the sentence and impose a lesser one. Rehearing was denied on October 13, 1981.
A federal district court order dated June 26, 1982 conditionally granted the writ, in the words of the Court of Criminal Appeals leaving the State "the choice of releasing appellant or retrying him." Granviel moved on July 8, 1982 to have the case dismissed, and the trial court denied the motion on August 10, 1982. A 1992 news report put the outcome simply: his first conviction was overturned because jurors were improperly excluded after being questioned about the death penalty.
The retrial was heard in Tarrant County in March 1983. The charge was again the capital murder of Natasha McClendon. The psychiatrist who had testified in 1975, John Holbrook, had died before the retrial, and the trial court admitted a transcript of his earlier testimony over the defense's objection. Granviel again raised insanity. He had asked the court for a mental-health expert who would work for the defense alone and keep the findings from the prosecution; the court refused, and instead appointed a neutral expert whose report went to both sides, as Texas law provided.
On May 5, 1983, the jury found Granviel guilty of capital murder. The same jury heard the punishment phase and answered the special issues so that the sentence was death.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, sitting as a full court, affirmed the 1983 judgment on July 2, 1986, in Granviel v. State, 723 S.W.2d 141, in an opinion by Judge Tom G. Davis. It overruled every ground of error, among them the excusal of prospective jurors for their opposition to the death penalty, the use of Holbrook's earlier testimony, the confession, the sufficiency of the evidence on the charge, and a speedy-trial claim based on the long interval since 1975. Judge Clinton, joined by Judge Teague, dissented on one point, the excusal of one prospective juror. The Supreme Court of the United States denied review on October 5, 1987, with Justices Brennan and Marshall dissenting on their general objection to the death penalty.
Granviel filed a federal habeas petition in the Northern District of Texas on December 7, 1987. After a hearing on two claims, the district court denied relief in August 1988. On August 28, 1989, in Granviel v. Lynaugh, 881 F.2d 185, the Fifth Circuit affirmed. It upheld the excusal of two prospective jurors who were opposed to capital punishment, ruled that excluding testimony that the death penalty does not deter crime was not constitutional error, and held that the Texas practice of a neutral, court-appointed psychiatrist satisfied due process. It found that by raising an insanity defense Granviel had waived Fifth Amendment protection against the use of the psychiatrists' testimony, that his confession was voluntary, and that testimony from a court officer about his behavior toward his lawyer was admissible. A federal court had also held a hearing on his sanity for execution and found him sane. Rehearing was denied on September 28, 1989.
On May 29, 1990, the Supreme Court issued an order in Granviel v. Texas, 495 U.S. 963, from which Justice Marshall, joined by Justice Brennan, dissented. Marshall wrote that the Fifth Circuit's ruling conflicted with the Court's 1985 decision in Ake v. Oklahoma, which he read as requiring a psychiatrist who is part of the defense team.
In June 1990 Amnesty International circulated an urgent action on Granviel's behalf, noting that he had been sentenced to death on May 5, 1983 and that his execution had been set for July 11, 1990. The organization asked supporters to write to the governor and the Board of Pardons and Paroles asking for commutation. The date on which that execution was stopped is not on record.
In June 1992 a new date was set, for shortly after midnight on Wednesday, June 3. His lawyer, Danny Burns, asked a federal judge in Fort Worth, Eldon Mahon, late on the Tuesday to halt it, arguing that Granviel was not competent to be executed because of psychosis. Burns told reporters that a former prison psychiatrist had given him evidence that Granviel was out of touch with reality. Before Mahon ruled, the Supreme Court stayed the execution a few hours before it was to be carried out, saying the justices wanted time to study the petition. United Press International noted that it would have been the ninth execution in Texas that year and the 51st since the state resumed capital punishment in 1976.
Granviel's last appeals came in 1996. A federal district court in Fort Worth, Judge Mahon again, denied a habeas petition and denied a stay and a certificate of probable cause. On the morning of February 27, 1996, the Fifth Circuit, in a per curiam order by Judges Garwood, Duhé and Wiener, denied a certificate of probable cause and a stay, adopting Mahon's opinion as its own. The order noted that the execution was set for after sundown that day.
He was executed that night in Texas. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice lists him as execution number 106, executed February 27, 1996, aged 45, from Tarrant County.
Several points remain open. The first is the fate of the other charges. The Court of Criminal Appeals noted in 1986 that other indictments arose from the same transaction as the capital murder of Natasha McClendon, and the 1989 Fifth Circuit opinion refers to a first trial on charges relating to another victim, but no trial of Granviel for the other six deaths is on record. His death sentence rested on the one conviction.
The second is the number of victims. Amnesty International in 1990 described him as convicted of murdering six people in October 1974, and the Fifth Circuit in 1989 spoke of six women and a child; the Court of Criminal Appeals' own list of the deaths in the 1976 opinion shows five on October 7, 1974 and two on February 8, 1975. No single count of the people killed in October 1974 is agreed, and the court's listing gives five.
The third is the mental-health evidence. At the first trial a defense psychologist diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, while the psychiatrist retained by the defense and then appointed by the court testified that Granviel was legally sane. A federal court found him sane for execution purposes in the 1980s, and in 1992 his lawyer argued the opposite. The courts that heard the claims did not set aside the sentence on this ground.
October 7, 1974: five members of one family die in Fort Worth, among them Natasha McClendon, aged 2.
February 8, 1975: two women die in Fort Worth; Granviel goes to the police and confesses to seven killings.
February 13, 1975: counsel appointed.
October 6, 1975: first trial begins in the 213th Judicial District Court, Tarrant County; he is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.
November 10, 1976: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirms.
May 23, 1977: U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
February 1, 1978: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denies state habeas relief.
September 11, 1981: Fifth Circuit sets aside the death sentence over the exclusion of a prospective juror.
June 26, 1982: federal district court conditionally grants the writ; the State must release or retry him.
August 10, 1982: trial court denies motion to dismiss.
March 1983: retrial begins.
May 5, 1983: convicted of capital murder again; sentenced to death.
July 2, 1986: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirms.
October 5, 1987: U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
December 7, 1987: federal habeas petition filed.
August 28, 1989: Fifth Circuit affirms denial of habeas relief.
May 29, 1990: Supreme Court order, Justices Marshall and Brennan dissenting.
July 11, 1990: execution date set.
June 3, 1992: execution date; Supreme Court stays it hours before.
February 27, 1996: Fifth Circuit denies stay; Granviel is executed.