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Exzavier Lamont
STEVENSON
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Dispute over 10 cents
Number of victims: 2
Date of murder:
February 16,
2000
Date of birth: June
6,
1968
Victims profile: Khalid
Masroor and Syed Mehdi
(convenience store clerks)
Method of murder:
Shooting
Location: Harris County, Texas, USA
Status: Sentenced to death on November 1, 2000
Name
TDCJ Number
Date of Birth
Exzavier Lamont Stevenson
999365
06/06/1968
Date Received
Age
(when Received)
Education Level
11/01/2000
32
9
Date of Offense
Age
(at the
Offense)
County
02/16/2000
31
Harris
Race
Gender
Hair Color
Black
Male
Black
Height
Weight
Eye Color
6 ft
0 in
181
Brown
Native County
Native State
Prior Occupation
Harris
Texas
laborer
Prior Prison
Record
2 year sentence from Harris County
for 1 count of assault. Released on mandatory supervision on
4/8/1997. Mandatory supervision discharge on 5/5/1998.
Summary of Offense
On 2/16/2000, Stevenson argued
with 2 male proprietors at a convenience store.
He returned a
short time later and fatally shot both men.
Co-defendants
None.
Race and Gender of
Victim
2 unknown males
Man Who Killed for 10 cents
Is Sentenced to Death
The New York Times
September 18, 2000
HOUSTON— A man who pleaded guilty to killing two
convenience store clerks in a dispute over 10 cents has been
sentenced to the death penalty.
The man, Exzavier Lamont Stevenson, 31, pleaded
guilty to capital murder in the shooting of the two clerks, Khalid
Masroor and Syed Mehdi, on Feb. 16 at the convenience store at a
gas station in Houston.
On Saturday the jury found that Mr. Stevenson
was a threat to society and, despite testimony from family members
regarding his childhood and low mental capacity, also found that
he should be sentenced to die.
Mr. Stevenson told the police he had forgotten
to collect 75 cents in change after buying gum at the store. He
said he returned to the store later the same day to make another
purchase, but the clerk refused to credit him 10 cents from the
earlier purchase.
Mr. Stevenson returned later, shot the clerks
and tried to open the cash register, witnesses said in court.
In the Court
of Criminal Appeals of Texas
No. 73,963
Exzavier Lamont Stevenson v.
The State of Texas
On Direct
Appeal from Harris County
Hervey, J.,
delivered the unanimous opinion of the Court.
O P I N I
O N
A jury convicted appellant of capital murder after
appellant pled guilty to the offense. The trial court sentenced
appellant to death pursuant to the jury's answers to the special
issues submitted at the punishment phase. Appellant raises one
point of error with several subpoints in an automatic direct
appeal to this Court. We affirm.
The evidence
showed that the then 31-year-old appellant argued with two clerks
in a convenience store. Appellant left the convenience store,
returned a short time later with a gun and shot the two clerks to
death. At the time of the offense, appellant had been previously
convicted of several assaults, of making terroristic threats and
of evading arrest. Before trial, a psychologist examined appellant
and determined that appellant was sane at the time of the offense
(appellant knew the difference between right and wrong when he
committed the offense) and that appellant was competent to stand
trial (appellant could, among other things, assist in his defense).
See Section 8.01, Texas Penal Code; Article 46.02(a),
Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.
In one point
of error, appellant claims that he is mentally retarded and that
executing mentally retarded persons violates the Eighth Amendment
to the United States Constitution. Appellant implicitly, if not
explicitly, concedes that he is only "mildly" and not "profoundly
or severely" mentally retarded. (1)
The record,
however, reflects that appellant made no such claim at trial.
Rather, appellant's assertion at trial and the issue the parties
litigated through their psychological experts was that a mental
illness reduced appellant's moral culpability for this offense and
justified a sentence less than death. Appellant did not assert
that his moral culpability should be reduced because of mental
retardation.
Appellant
used the testimony of his psychological expert to claim during
closing jury arguments that his untreated mental illness may have
contributed to his killing of the victims:
I ask you to
take all those things into consideration. This man is mentally ill.
This man was born mentally ill. The question becomes, do we
operate under the mad dog theory. Mad dog can't be cured, shoot
him. Some people do. I ask you not to.
Was he ever
treated?
Not really.
Couldn't keep up with the treatment. Nobody to take him. He never
was really treated. One thing Dr. Brown said is a positive aspect
is, if the man had had prolonged psychiatric treatment, this may
never have happened. This may never have happened. Not somebody
hell bent on stealing, robbing and killing and carrying on. But
somebody, if he had just gotten treated, could have been saved,
could have saved [one of the victims] and others out there that
day.
The
prosecution responded by using the testimony of its psychological
expert to claim that appellant's killing of the victims was not
caused by any mental illness:
This is what
this case is about. And I don't want to-there are so many details
to cover. This is what the case is about. [Appellant] suffers from
a mental illness. It may be severe, it may not be severe.
Psychologists use various tests. Psychologists say one thing today
and another thing tomorrow. And all of that is important. And you
may be able to help some people if you take them to psychologists
and you give them medicine. Medicine sometimes helps. Other things
that psychologists use sometimes helps.
But aside
from psychology, everybody has a personality. They think if they
are rational-and that's what Dr. Friedman was-that's all he was
examining for, was he competent and did he know right from wrong.
And Dr. Brown agreed with that. They know right from wrong. They
pick and choose. They choose to go back to the store instead of
staying home. They choose to steal or not to steal. Does not stem
from the mental illness. That is a problem that people deal with.
But whether you choose to act is a personality.
We set out
the entirety of the portion of appellant's brief supporting
appellant's argument that he is mentally retarded.
As the
factual record in this case makes clear, Appellant Exavier
Stevenson exhibits the typical characteristics of mental
retardation. His cognitive impairment, reflected in his IQ of 68,
manifested itself at an early age ("Special Ed classes," "Slow
classes where he was a slow learner"). (R. 16, 17) He also
displayed adaptive difficulties and "tics" at a young age. He was
"distant, off to hisself in a dark room, rocking and speaking to
no one." (R. 16, 19) At night in bed he would rock his head on the
bed until his nose would bleed. (R. 16, 65) He "always rocked" ...
"just like he did now, and banged his head against the wall." (R.
16, 54-56) He pulled his eyelashes out all the time, and his
eyebrows. (R. 16, 58) In the hot summertime he put on three
jackets and came out in the heat, for which his father beat him.
And until he was "trained" to do otherwise, he would not engage in
violence, even when everybody picked on him all the time because
they knew he would not fight. (R. 16, 46) When he was 12 or 13 and
lost a fight with his brother Aubrey in front of girls, he tried
to kill himself by taking a bottle of Tylenol. (R. 16, 24, 53-54)
Appellant was heavily dependent on others, keeping to himself and
relying on those in his family who were stable, who loved him, and
even on his mother, who was chronically mentally ill. ("I am the
movie star; Ms. Daisy, and I have plenty of money") (R. 16, 89)
Appellant
was vulnerable to abuse as a child. The adults' reaction to his
being slow and refusing to fight was to "downgrade him and tell
him that he's not going to be nothing" and to beat him repeatedly
"until they got tired" (R. 16, 51): his father with a water hose;
his mother with a belt or her fists (R. 16, 22, 50); his
grandfather with whatever he could get in his hands, a belt, or
extension cord (R. 16, 51); his stepfather "until it was so bad (his
sister) couldn't watch." (R. 16, 69-70)
The adaptive
difficulty continued into his childhood. He could not hold a job
for very long, except for one $5-an-hour job as an unarmed night
security watchman. Appellant did work at whatever he could find to
take care of his daughter and Monique Hayward's two children. He
lived off and on with his mother and siblings. He had to move out
of his sister Dorothy's apartment, to live with his mother, when a
landlord intervened. His mother was living with a man, but the man
died, and his family didn't want them there anymore. (R. 16,
19-20, 66-67) After that, he really had no place to go. In January
1999, he went to stay with his cousin Eric Taylor. At that time he
was very "distant and depressed." (R. 16, 40)
We have also
independently searched the record in review of appellant's claim
of mental retardation. While appellant presented evidence of
unusual behavior indicative of mental illness, this evidence is
nevertheless insufficient to support a finding of mental
retardation. (2)
Appellant's
mother testified that a doctor once told her that the then 30-year-old
appellant had the mind of a 19-year-old.
Q. Somebody
told you he was retarded?
A. The
doctor told me-okay, like if he's 30, he has the mind like a 19-year-old.
That's what the doctor explained to me.
Likewise,
this evidence does not support a finding that appellant is
mentally retarded. The only other evidence having some bearing on
whether appellant is mentally retarded is the testimony of
appellant's psychological expert who testified that appellant's 68
IQ is "in the upper range of mentally retarded."
Q. Dr. Brown,
now did you make any independent testing-or do an independent
testing to determine his IQ?
A. Yes,
yesterday I did administer an intelligence test; and it was
consistent with what was reported by the family. He has an IQ in
the upper range of mentally retarded, mentally defective range. 68
was his IQ.
Appellant's
psychological expert also agreed with the prosecution that a
person facing the death penalty might have a strong motivation to
score low on an IQ test.
Q. If you
believe that having a 68 on an IQ test may save you from the death
penalty, don't you have a strong motivation to score low on an IQ
test?
A. Might.
A low IQ
score by itself, however, does not support a finding of mental
retardation. See Ex parte Tennard, 960 S.W.2d 57, 61 (Tex.Cr.App.
1997), cert. denied, 118 S.Ct. 2376 (1998) (low IQ score, standing
alone, does not support a finding of mental retardation).
(3) We find that on this record the evidence is
insufficient to support appellant's claim that he is mentally
retarded. See Penry, 109 S.Ct. at 2941 (Penry's
psychological expert testified that Penry was mentally retarded);
Tennard, 960 S.W.2d at 60-61; see also Section
591.003(13), Texas Health & Safety Code, (definition of mentally
retarded); Section 591.003(16), Texas Health & Safety Code, (setting
out method for determining whether a person is mentally retarded).
We, therefore, need not consider his Eighth Amendment claim. Point
of error one is overruled.
The judgment
of the trial court is affirmed.
Hervey, J.
Delivered:
April 24, 2002
Publish
1. See Penry v. Lynaugh,
109 S.Ct. 2934, 2954-57 (1989) (Eighth Amendment may prohibit
executing only persons "who are profoundly, or severely retarded
and wholly lacking the capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of
their actions" in part because it cannot be said that all mentally
retarded people "can never act with the level of culpability
associated with the death penalty").
2. During the punishment
phase, defense counsel called several of appellant's family
members to recount instances where appellant manifested symptoms
of mental illness. Most saliently, they testified that appellant
suffered from a split personality, that he was a slow learner,
that he suffered physical and mental abuse by authority figures,
that he would rock in the corner of a dark room, that he once
tried to kill himself with an overdose of Tylenol after he lost a
fight, that he once wore three jackets outside in the summertime,
that he would pluck out his eyelashes and eyebrows nervously, that
he routinely hit his head on the wall but did not remember doing
so, and that he would carve symbols on his body with a burned
knife or hanger. A defense expert also recalled documents in
appellant's file recording other instances of self-mutilation and
writing on walls in his own blood.
3. A contrary holding could
have the unintended consequence of threatening the liberty of
citizens with low IQ scores or of "mildly" retarded citizens who
do not commit capital murder and who are "perfectly capable of a
self-sustaining life." See Penry, 109 S.Ct. at 2957-58 (relying
solely on the "mental age" concept, which is defined as the "chronological
age of nonretarded children whose average IQ test performance is
equivalent to that of the individual with mental retardation," to
hold that execution of any person with a low mental age would
constitute cruel and unusual punishment could have a "disempowering
effect if applied in other areas of the law" such that "mildly
retarded persons could be denied the opportunity to enter into
contracts or to marry"); Tennard, 960 S.W.2d at 61 (using
IQ scores as the sole measure of mental retardation could threaten
the liberty of citizens "with low IQ scores who are `perfectly
capable of a self-sustaining life'"); David L. Rumley, Comment:
A License to Kill: The Categorical Exemption of the Mentally
Retarded from the Death Penalty, 24 St. Mary's Law Journal
Number 4 1299, 1338-40 (1993).
