|
|
|
|
News and Features about Organized Crime, Mafia and La Cosa Nostra taken from National and Local News Sources. In an attempt to get you this type of coverage in a timely manner we can not be responsible for the content of the following material. |
|
8-31-99 Leisure is executed after Supreme Court, Carnahan refuse to intervene. Tuesday, August 31, 1999 | 7:23 p.m.
By Kim Bell POTOSI, Mo. - David R. Leisure, condemned for the mob-related car bombings that rocked St. Louis in the early 1980s, went to his death quietly today in the execution chamber of the Potosi Correctional Center. Strapped to a gurney, Leisure looked haggard and unshaven. He mouthed a few words of goodbye to his sister watching from a viewing box as the first in a series of lethal drugs raced into his veins. A priest hugged the sister, then said a prayer. Leisure's final words, according to prison officials, were: "I am an innocent man. The lawyer who represented me was on drugs. Tell my children, family and relatives I love them.'' Leisure's chest heaved, he blinked his eyes and coughed hard. Then, he fell silent. He was pronounced dead at 2:17 a.m., four minutes after the procedure began. The execution had been delayed two hours while the U.S. Supreme Court considered a last-ditch appeal, in which Leisure's court-appointed appeals team argued he was retarded and not mentally fit for execution. The high court turned down the request at 1:10 a.m. Leisure, 49, became the first organized-crime figure in the United States to be executed since 1944. Security was tighter than ever outside the prison. Twice the normal number of highway patrol troopers, sheriffs deputies and a special squad of prison guards patrolled the grounds. Every vehicle that drove onto the prison lot, including those driven by state witnesses, was searched for explosives by specially trained dogs. In 1987, a St. Louis jury recommended that Leisure be put to death for planting the car bomb in 1980 that killed underworld leader James A. Michaels Sr., the reputed head of St. Louis' Syrian crime faction. The Leisure family wanted control over Laborers Local 110. Leisure's attorneys painted him as a follower, someone who took orders from his older cousins, Anthony and Paul Leisure. Anthony Leisure detonated the bomb; Paul Leisure called the shots. David Leisure, with a seventh-grade education, was far from Hollywood's glitzy idea of an organized-crime figure. He worked at a towing and salvage yard. He had an IQ of 74 and functioned like a 10- or 12-year-old boy, two psychologists said. One of his appeals lawyers, John William Simon, said: "David Leisure is to organized crime what a mom-and-pop ice cream store is to corporate America.'' But federal prosecutor Thomas Dittmeier, who brought down the Leisure gang, said David was a hands-on participant who deserved to die. While Leisure was one of about 10 people tied to the car bombings of the 1980s, only he was sentenced to death. Paul and Anthony Leisure, whom the federal government said were more culpable in the killings, received life in prison after separate trials. In David Leisure's final statements today, the lawyer he claimed was on drugs was actually a law student who was part of his defense team at trial. That law student, Gerald Bassett, admitted recently in an affidavit that he was heavily involved in heroin and cocain use in the 1970s and 1980s. On Tuesday, Leisure had a short-lived victory when U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey of Kansas City issued a stay of execution until a hearing is held on Leisure's competency. Her ruling came down about 6 p.m. "That sounds good,'' Leisure told a reporter, in an interview from his holding cell. "But they can take that away from me?'' Three hours later, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Laughrey, saying the execution should go forward. Leisure's attorneys immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. As that court considered the appeal, Leisure's scheduled 12:01 a.m. was postponed. Shortly after the Supreme Court denied Leisure's appeal at 1:10 a.m., Gov. Mel Carnahan announced that he would not stand in the way of the execution either. Leisure spent Tuesday visiting with relatives, including his 4-year-old grandson. He took a sedative about 7:30 p.m., and ate a meal that consisted of steak, baked potato, salad and apple pie with vanilla ice cream. On Sept. 17, 1980, David Leisure crawled beneath Michaels' car and planted a remote-controlled bomb as the car was parked outside St. Raymond's Maronite Church. Michaels was inside eating lunch. Leisure was present when his cousin, Anthony Leisure, detonated the bomb on I-55 near the Reavis Barracks Road exit. Michaels' car was scattered over a 200-foot radius by the force of the explosion. Michaels' body was dismembered, and part of it was hurled against a passing car. Micheals' grandson, James A. Michaels III, recently asked Gov. Mel Carnahan to spare Leisure's life. G. Robert Blakey, author of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute and a law professor at Notre Dame, said the Leisure gang was brought down by techniques like wiretapping. "Without wiretapping, without investigative grand juries, without a witness protection program, organized crime was above the law in Missouri,'' Blakey said. "It wasn't until the federal authorities, with those techniques, came into St. Louis and did the investigations that the power of organized crime was broken.''
|
|
AmericanMafia.com
Copyright © 1999 PLR International
|