Thomas Joseph Grasso was convicted of two murders committed in separate events, one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in December 1990 and one in New York in July 1991. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in New York and to death in Oklahoma. Because he wanted the Oklahoma sentence carried out, his case became a contest between the two states over which sentence would come first. Grasso was 32 when he was executed in Oklahoma on March 20, 1995.
Hilda Johnson, 87, died in Tulsa on December 24, 1990. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals later found that the killing took place in the course of a theft, and Grasso pleaded guilty to it.
Leslie Holtz, 82, died in New York on July 3, 1991; his age is also given as 81. The killing took place in the course of a theft, and a second person took part. The case was brought in Richmond County.
Both victims were elderly. Little else is known of either of them.
Grasso was convicted in New York of murder in the second degree, on a guilty plea entered after a hearing at which, with a lawyer present, he gave up his rights. The conviction is also described as the result of a jury verdict in Richmond County. On April 21, 1992, he was sentenced to 20 years to life. Under that sentence he would first have become eligible for parole on July 9, 2011. He was sent to Ossining, to Sing Sing prison.
On August 15, 1991, Tulsa County prosecutors filed an information charging Grasso with First Degree Burglary and First Degree Murder in the death of Hilda Johnson. On July 8, 1992, District Attorney David Moss lodged a detainer against him in New York and asked for temporary custody under the Interstate Agreement on Detainers, a compact both states had adopted. Moss promised that Grasso would be returned to New York after the Oklahoma trial. On July 14 Grasso signed a request for final disposition of the Oklahoma charges. Moss accepted temporary custody on August 4, and on August 17, 1992, New York transferred Grasso to two people designated by Oklahoma's administrator of the agreement.
Grasso was bound over for trial after a preliminary hearing on September 4, 1992. On September 11 a competency application was granted and a clinical psychologist, Dr. William Cooper, examined him. Dr. Cooper found him competent. He saw no mental illness that required treatment.
On September 28, 1992, Grasso pleaded guilty to First Degree Burglary and First Degree Murder in the District Court of Tulsa County, Case No. CF-91-3404. The court accepted the pleas after confirming that they were knowing and voluntary. Grasso waived a jury for sentencing and, against the advice of his lawyers, presented no mitigating evidence, because he wanted the death penalty. The judge delayed sentencing for two days so that he could reconsider and withdraw his pleas. He did not.
On September 30, 1992, he was sentenced to death for the murder and to 500 years in prison for the burglary. The judge found three of four alleged aggravating circumstances proven beyond a reasonable doubt: a prior conviction for a felony involving violence, which the court tied to Florida convictions in 1985 and to the New York murder conviction; a probability of future violent acts that would make him a continuing threat to society; and that the murder was committed to avoid or prevent a lawful arrest or prosecution, which rested on Grasso's own statement at the plea hearing. The judge did not find a fourth alleged circumstance. Judgment was entered on October 2, 1992. A death warrant set for December 4, 1992 was stayed by the Court of Criminal Appeals on November 23, 1992 so that the mandatory sentence review could take place.
Grasso asked to waive his direct appeal. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals treated the question as one of first impression in the state: whether a capital defendant may give up the statutory right to a direct appeal, and by what standard. It adopted the test used by the Arkansas Supreme Court in Franz v. State. Under that test a defendant may forgo a direct appeal only if a court finds that he has the capacity to understand the choice between life and death and that he knowingly and intelligently waives his rights. The court sent the question to the Tulsa County district court, which found Grasso competent and found that his waiver was knowing and intelligent. The Court of Criminal Appeals held that the record supported both findings.
It then carried out the mandatory review of the death sentence. It found that the evidence supported the aggravating circumstances found by the trial judge and that the sentence had not been imposed under the influence of passion, prejudice or any other arbitrary factor. Oral argument was heard on April 20, 1993, with Grasso present. On July 15, 1993, in Grasso v. State, 857 P.2d 802, the court affirmed the judgments and sentences. Judge Lane wrote the opinion, joined by Presiding Judge Lumpkin and Vice Presiding Judge Johnson. Judge Chapel agreed that the sentence should stand but wrote separately to call for safeguards in future cases, including a separate competency evaluation for a waiver of appeal and a clear, on-the-record waiver of mitigation. He noted that the psychologist's examination had addressed competency for trial, not competency to waive an appeal.
New York asked on October 26, 1992 when Grasso would be returned. In February 1993 Moss wrote that Grasso had waived his rights under the agreement and wanted to be executed promptly. Through the spring of 1993 New York demanded his return and Oklahoma officials said they would resist. New York's corrections commissioner and the superintendent of Sing Sing filed a declaratory judgment action on August 5, 1993 in the Eastern District of Oklahoma. An execution date of October 19, 1993 had been set on September 1.
On October 8, 1993, Chief Judge Seay decided State of New York v. Poe, 835 F. Supp. 585. He held that the agreement limits temporary custody to prosecution of the untried charges and requires the receiving state to return the prisoner at the earliest practicable time, and that a death sentence creates no exception. Grasso's own waiver did not change this, because the agreement governs relations between states, not a prisoner's choice of the order of his sentences. The court ordered Oklahoma to return Grasso to New York to serve the New York sentence before the Oklahoma death sentence could be carried out. It added that New York could waive its right to his return, but only through a cooperative custody arrangement with Oklahoma. An execution that had been scheduled was stayed on October 8, 1993, eleven hours before it was due.
Governor Mario Cuomo, who opposed the death penalty, would neither waive New York's priority nor commute the New York sentence. Oklahoma's governor, David Walters, a fellow Democrat, accused Cuomo of letting his objection to the death penalty obstruct justice in Oklahoma. Walters lost the contest in court.
Grasso then went to court in New York himself. He moved under section 440.20 of New York's Criminal Procedure Law to set aside the 20-years-to-life sentence and to be resentenced so that it could run concurrently or consecutively with the Oklahoma sentence. On June 17, 1994, in People v. Grasso, 162 Misc. 2d 84, Justice Charles A. Kuffner, Jr. denied the motion. The court held that the governor's decision on clemency was an executive matter, that the sentence was neither illegal nor unconstitutional, that another state's sentencing policy could not make New York's sentence unlawful, and that no statute supported resentencing. It added that Grasso's situation resulted from his own choices.
George Pataki defeated Cuomo in the November 1994 election after promising to send Grasso back to Oklahoma and to restore the death penalty in New York. Within days of taking office, Pataki ordered Grasso transferred to Oklahoma. By then Oklahoma's governor, Frank Keating, was the official who could commute the sentence, and Grasso was refusing legal and clemency appeals. Pataki was also sponsoring legislation to restore the death penalty in New York. The execution was set for March 20, 1995.
Grasso was executed in Oklahoma on Monday, March 20, 1995, and held to his demand for the death penalty to the end. Amnesty International, which opposes capital punishment in all cases, said it deeply regretted the execution. Grasso's lawyer said he was at peace and had asked the victims' families for forgiveness.
On March 21, 1995, the day after the execution, Tulsa County District Attorney David Moss's office charged Grasso's former wife in the Johnson case. Prosecutors had delayed the charge for fear that Grasso would fight his execution, and Moss said new evidence connecting her to the case had come to light in the preceding two months. The outcome of that charge has not been reported. The case became a symbol in the New York debate over capital punishment.
Leslie Holtz's age is given as 82 and also as 81. The New York conviction is described as a guilty plea and also as a jury verdict. The execution date stayed in October 1993 is given as October 19, while the stay itself is dated October 8, eleven hours before an execution was due.
December 24, 1990: Hilda Johnson, 87, dies in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
July 3, 1991: Leslie Holtz dies in New York.
August 15, 1991: Tulsa County files First Degree Burglary and First Degree Murder charges against Grasso.
April 21, 1992: Grasso is sentenced in New York to 20 years to life for murder in the second degree.
July 8, 1992: Tulsa County lodges a detainer and requests temporary custody.
August 17, 1992: New York transfers Grasso to Oklahoma.
September 28, 1992: Grasso pleads guilty in Tulsa County.
September 30, 1992: Sentenced to death for the murder and to 500 years for the burglary.
November 23, 1992: The Court of Criminal Appeals stays a death warrant for mandatory review.
July 15, 1993: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirms the convictions and sentences.
August 5, 1993: New York files suit in federal court in Oklahoma.
October 8, 1993: The federal court orders Grasso returned to New York first; his execution is stayed.
June 17, 1994: A New York court denies Grasso's motion to set aside his New York sentence.
Early 1995: Governor Pataki orders Grasso transferred to Oklahoma.
March 20, 1995: Grasso is executed in Oklahoma.
March 21, 1995: Grasso's former wife is charged in Tulsa County.