 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Attorney discounts defense efforts
By BRADY DENNIS DADE CITY -- Nearly a decade after John Ruthell Henry was convicted twice for killing his wife and her 5-year-old son, his new attorney on Monday argued that earlier defense teams failed to present evidence of Henry's emotional and mental problems before he was sentenced to die. Henry was found guilty of first-degree murder in 1987 in a Pasco County court in the stabbing death of his wife, Suzanne Henry, 29, in Zephyrhills in 1985. Authorities said the two had been fighting when he killed her. Later that same night, after smoking crack cocaine, Henry took her 5-year-old son, Eugene Christian, to an isolated spot in northeast Hillsborough County and stabbed the boy five times in the neck. Henry also was convicted in 1987 in Hillsborough County of Christian's murder. The Florida Supreme Court eventually overturned both murder convictions. A Pasco jury convicted him again of his wife's murder in 1991; a Hillsborough jury convicted him again of the child's death in 1992. In an unrelated crime years earlier, Henry pleaded no contest to a second-degree murder charge in the fatal stabbing of his common-law wife, Patricia Roddy. He served 71/2 years for that killing. On Monday, defense attorney Baya Harrison tried to persuade Circuit Judge Maynard Swanson to overturn Henry's death sentence for Suzanne Henry's murder. He called Miami forensic psychologist Bill Mosman, who testified that Henry's lawyers in previous trials failed to present any mental health experts whose evaluations might have helped Henry. Mosman, among other things, focused on Henry's extremely violent background. He said Henry experienced extreme poverty, was abused, suffered through his father's alcoholism and watched daily violent fights between his parents. "This was a chronic way of life for years," Mosman said. "This was one heck of a violent family." Mosman also highlighted the history of mental illness, loss and trauma in Henry's family, as well as Henry's drug use, which started at age 5. Mosman concluded that because of all the anxiety and adversity in Henry's life, he has the maturity and mind of a 14-year-old. Mosman also testified that when Henry murdered his wife and her son, he was acting with the mind of someone even younger than that. "The person plunging that knife into Suzanne (Henry) was not a man; it was a child," Mosman said. Ultimately, Harrison argued that a jury should have the right to hear all the evidence about Henry's upbringing and what motivated him to commit the murders. Without jurors having heard those mitigating factors, Harrison said, Henry was improperly sentenced to death. Because prosecutors plan on calling witnesses in the case who could not make the hearing Monday, the hearing will continue at 1:30 p.m. today. Henry, handcuffed and shackled and wearing a blue jail-issued jumpsuit, said nothing during the hearing. As he left, one of his sisters waved to him from a nearby bench and said, "Goodbye, brother." He replied: "I love you." In the hallway outside, family members who had come to support Henry said they were keeping their hopes alive. "That's my baby brother; I love him very much," said Ruby Henry. "What I really hope is that he will be off death row."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From today's Pasco Times |
