HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday spared the life of a convicted killer shortly before the man’s scheduled execution for masterminding the fatal shootings of his mother and brother.
In sparing the life of Thomas “Bart” Whitaker about an hour before he was scheduled for lethal injection, Abbott accepted the state parole board’s rare clemency recommendation. Whitaker’s father, Kent, also was shot in the 2003 plot at the family’s suburban Houston home but survived and led the effort to save his son from execution. Abbott commuted the sentence to life without parole.
“I’m thankful not for me but for my dad,” Bart Whitaker told prison officials after getting the word in a tiny holding cell a few feet from the death chamber. “Any punishment that I would have or will receive is just, but my dad did nothing wrong. The system worked for him today. And I will do my best to uphold my role in the system.”
The seven-member Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, whose members are appointed by the governor, recommended unanimously Tuesday that Abbott commute the sentence. Abbott, a Republican had the option of accepting the recommendation, rejecting it or doing nothing.
“Mr. Whitaker’s father, who survived the attempt on his life, passionately opposes the execution of his son. Mr. Whitaker’s father insists that he would be victimized again if the state put to death his last remaining immediate family member,” Abbott said in a proclamation issued Thursday evening, adding that Whitaker had also agreed to waive all further rights to parole.
Kent Whitaker said he was “humbled” and looked forward to hugging and touching his son.
“It was overpowering,” he said of the governor’s decision, which he learned in a phone call from Keith Hampton, one of his son’s lawyers. He and supporters were nearby the prison in a home used by inmate visitors and were standing and praying, Whitaker said. He put Hampton’s call on his speakerphone.
“The room erupted,” he said.
Hampton said he was “very relieved (Abbott) did the right thing.”
Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said Bart Whitaker placed his arm through the bars of the holding cell after he was finished speaking with prison officials and asked to shake his hand.
“I haven’t touched another person in 13 years,” Whitaker told Clark, who said he accepted the prisoner’s request. Death row inmates in Texas are kept alone in their cells for 23 hours a day and their one hour of recreation also is alone in a concrete wall enclosure.
Kent and Patricia Whitaker and their two boys had returned home the night of Dec. 10, 2003, following a restaurant dinner to celebrate Bart Whitaker’s college graduation when they were confronted by a gunman wearing dark clothes and a ski mask. Patricia Whitaker and her 19-year-old son, Kevin, were killed. Kent Whitaker and Bart were wounded.
Nearly two years later, Bart Whitaker was arrested in Mexico after investigators determined he arranged the plot to collect a family estate he believed was worth more than $1 million.
“I’m 100 percent guilty,” he testified at his trial. “I put the plan in motion.”