Ricky Ray Rector

Ricky Ray Rector (January 12, 1950 – January 24, 1992), was executed for the 1981 murder of police officer Robert Martin in Conway, Arkansas.

After killing a man in a nightclub, he would later shoot a police officer in the back with whom he had agreed to turn himself in. He then shot himself in the head in an apparent suicide attempt. The attempt left him effectively lobotomized.

Night in question

On March 21, 1981, Rector and some friends drove to a dance hall at Tommy’s Old-Fashioned Home-Style Restaurant in Conway. When one of Rector’s friends was refused entry after being unable to pay the three dollar cover charge, Rector became incensed and pulled a .38 pistol from his waist band. He fired several shots, wounding two and killing a third man. The third man, Arthur Criswell, died almost instantly after being struck in the throat and forehead.

After initial crime

Rector left the scene of the murder in a friend’s car and wandered the city for three days, alternately staying in the woods or with relatives. On March 24, Rector’s sister convinced him to turn himself in. Rector agreed to surrender only to Officer Robert Martin, whom he had known since he was a child.

Killing of police officer

Officer Martin arrived at Rector’s mother’s home shortly after three p.m. and began chatting with Rector’s mother and sister. Shortly thereafter, Rector arrived and greeted Officer Martin. As Officer Martin turned away to continue his conversation with Mrs. Rector, Ricky Ray Rector drew his pistol from behind his back and fired two shots into Officer Martin, striking him in the jaw and neck. Rector then turned and walked out of the house.

Attempted suicide and resulting lobotomy

Once he had walked past his mother’s backyard, Rector put his gun to his own temple and fired. Rector was quickly discovered by other police officers and was rushed to the local hospital. The shot had destroyed Rector’s frontal lobe, resulting in what was essentially a self-lobotomy.

Trial

Rector survived the surgery and was put on trial for the murders of Criswell and Martin. His defense attorneys argued that Rector was not competent to stand trial, but after hearing conflicting testimony from several experts who had evaluated Rector, Judge George F. Hartje ruled that Rector was competent to stand trial. Rector was convicted on both counts and sentenced to death.

Controversy over execution

Rector was subject to a unique overlap of controversies in 1992 during his execution in Arkansas. A question of the morality of killing someone who was functionally retarded. An oft-cited example of his mental insufficiency is his decision to save the dessert of his last meal for after his execution. [Frady, Marshall. "Death in Arkansas" The New Yorker, 22 February 1993] In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of people with mental retardation in Atkins v. Virginia, ruling that the practice constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Rector was African-American, adding to racial questions relating to the death penalty.

Role in 1992 Presidential campaign

By 1992, Bill Clinton was insisting that Democrats "should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent" and took a position strongly supporting capital punishment. To make his point, he flew home to Arkansas mid-campaign to affirm that the execution would continue as scheduled. Some considered it a turning point in that race, hardening a soft public image. Fact|date=February 2007 Others tend to cite the execution as an example of what they perceive to be Clinton's opportunism, directly influenced by Michael Dukakis and his response to CNN's Bernard Shaw when asked during a campaign debate on October 13, 1988 if he would be supportive of the death penalty were his wife to be raped and murdered. Dukakis responded that he would not; some critics felt he framed his response too legalistically and logically, and did not address it sufficiently personally.

Last meal and execution

Rector seemed incapable of understanding his pending death sentence. For his last meal, he left the pecan pie on the side of the tray, telling the guards who came to take him to the execution chamber that he was saving it "for later".

Rector was executed by lethal injection. It took medical staff, with Rector’s help, more than fifty minutes to find a suitable vein. The curtain remained closed between Rector and the witnesses, but some reported they could hear Rector moaning. The administrator of the State Department of Corrections Medical Program said “the moans did come as a team of two medical people that had grown to five worked on both sides of his body to find a vein. That may have contributed to his occasional outbursts.” The state later attributed the difficulty in finding a suitable vein to Rector’s heavy weight and to his use of an antipsychotic medication.

Aftermath

Rector was the third person executed by the state of Arkansas since "Furman v. Georgia", ussc|408|238|1972, after new capital punishment laws were passed in Arkansas and that came into force on March 23, 1973.

Bill Clinton's critics from the anti-capital punishment have seen the case of Rector as an unpleasant example of what they view as Clinton's cynical careerism. The writer Christopher Hitchens, in particular, devotes much of a chapter of his book on Clinton, "No One Left to Lie To" to what he regards as the immorality of the then Democratic candidate's decision to condone, and take political advantage of, Rector's execution.Hitchens, Christopher. "No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton", Verso Books, 2000.] Hitchens argues that among other calculations, Clinton was attempting to change the subject from the ongoing Gennifer Flowers sex scandal.

See also

* Capital punishment in Arkansas
* Capital punishment in the United States

References