I'm not him...thank you good night!

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4919558.html

Killer 'not much of a comedian' before execution

By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press

RESOURCES
Texas Department of Criminal Justice execution schedule

HUNTSVILLE — Condemned prisoner Patrick Knight was executed this evening for the deaths of an Amarillo-area couple without delivering a promised funny punch line.

In a final statement in which he said he would tell a joke, Knight thanked God for his friends and asked for help for innocent men on death row. He named several he said were innocent. His voice shaking and nearly in tears, he said, "Not all of us are innocent, but those are."

After expressing love to some friends, he said, "I said I was going to tell a joke. Death has set me free. That's the biggest joke. I deserve this."

"And the other joke is that I am not Patrick Bryan Knight and y'all can't stop this execution now. Go ahead, I'm finished."

Nine minutes later at 6:21 p.m. CDT, he was pronounced dead.

Prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons disputed Knight's mistaken identity claim.

"We fingerprint them when they come over," she said.

Randall County Sheriff Joel Richardson, who watched Knight die, said the joke plan seemed to be a ploy by Knight to draw attention to himself.

"Despite all the hype about his joke, it turns out he's not much of a comedian," Richardson said. "He's simply an executed cold-blooded killer.

"At this point, it doesn't much matter any more."

Richardson, who was chief deputy in the county when Knight was arrested there in 1991 for capital murder, also refuted Knight's identity contention.

"He's passed every test," the sheriff said. "He is Patrick Knight."

Knight, 39, was the 18th inmate executed this year in Texas, the nation's busiest capital punishment state, and the fourth this month.

His appeals had been exhausted. The U.S. Supreme Court in February refused to review Knight's case, and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down a clemency request.

"Unfortunately, that's basically it," said Paul Mansur, Knight's attorney.

Knight was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the fatal shootings of Walter Werner, 58, and his wife, Mary Ann, 56. Knight lived in a trailer next door to the couple's home just outside Amarillo.

Knight told prison officials this afternoon when he arrived at the death house that he had as many as 1,300 jokes delivered to his cell on death row that he considered. He said he narrowed the list to seven, then to five, and ran those finalists past his condemned buddies to pick which one they liked the best and would deliver during his final statement.

Knight, who was on probation for burglary at the time of their deaths, had been soliciting jokes in the mail and on an Internet site set up by a friend. He said his humor effort was intended to boost the spirits of his fellow condemned inmates.

"A little bit of levity is needed," Knight said of the mood on death row. "And it seems to be working. I just want to go out laughing. I'm not trying to disrespect anyone. I know I'm not innocent."

Texas inmates with execution dates are housed in a separate area of death row. At least 13 other convicted murderers have death dates in the coming months, including two in July and five each in August and September.

"I don't think his point was to trivialize it," said Mansur, who met with Knight last week. "They've had 17 executions and we're in the 25th week of the year. They see these people go and these are people they know and communicate with. They have a camaraderie together. So it's really just for them."

Randall County District Attorney James Farren, whose office prosecuted Knight at his 1993 capital murder trial, said Knight's joke plans were another example of the convict's recklessness.

"People like Mr. Knight are not discretionary," Farren said. "They are equal opportunity criminals and pretty well will strike out at anyone. There's not a lot of due process when they make their decision.

"It just shows he has no respect for human life, including his own."

When the Werners arrived home Aug. 26, 1991, they found Knight and a friend, Robert Bradfield, waiting inside for them. They were held captive in their basement through the next day, then bound, gagged, blindfolded and taken in their own van to a spot about four miles away. There they were forced to kneel on the ground and each was shot in the back of the head. Their bodies were left in a ditch.

Knight went back to his trailer and went to sleep.

When police investigating their disappearance questioned him, he initially denied involvement, but later confessed and led authorities to the bodies.

Knight said he was young and immature, and drunk and high on drugs, and didn't remember much about the slayings, which were the climax of complaints the Werners had made about his loud music and loud cars.

"I regret so much because they were such good people," said Knight, who grew up in Slidell, La., and was known in prison as the "Insane Cajun."

"I'm the cause of this crime, no doubt about it," he said. "It bothers me I might be capable of taking someone's life."

He said accomplice Bradfield, who was 19 at the time, looked up to him as a big brother. He made drugs and alcohol attractive and available to Bradfield, who wound up with a pair of life prison sentences.

Scheduled to die next — on July 10 — is Rolando Ruiz, the convicted triggerman in a murder-for-hire insurance scheme that left a San Antonio woman dead in 1992.

 

You b*stard!