By Bob Ray Sanders
bobray@star-telegram.com
For many in this country, Friday was a day to reflect on a horrific event that happened 71 years ago: the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
But for one Fort Worth family, Dec. 7 will "live in infamy" for another reason: It marks the day one of their own made history by becoming the first person put to death by lethal injection and the first person in Texas to be executed following an 18-year hiatus for capital punishment in the United States.
Charlie Brooks Jr. was executed in Huntsville on Dec. 7, 1982, having been convicted of shooting to death a Fort Worth used car company employee six years earlier.
His family, friends and opponents of the death penalty held a memorial service Friday on the 30th anniversary of his death at the Riverside Community Center, not far from where Brooks and his co-defendant grew up.
Brooks' execution date had been pushed ahead of those for other inmates who had been on Death Row for a while, and neither he nor his family believed it would go forward, son Keith Brooks told me last week.
Keith, who was 20 at the time, went to Huntsville that evening with his mother, Joyce Brooks, and older brother, Derrek, but his father decided that he did not want them to witness the execution.
They didn't have hope for clemency from the governor's office, Keith said, because Texas was between administrations. Gov. Bill Clements, who already had denied clemency, had been defeated by Mark White, who had not been sworn in yet. Still, the family believed either the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals or Supreme Court would halt the execution.
Neither did.
"It was devastating for us," Keith said. "It was shocking. It was an unfamiliar feeling. Unreal. I was mad and stayed mad a long time."
He said one of the hardest things for him and Derrick was that their younger brother and sister "never knew our father."
Keith, who is married and the father of three, owns a paving company in Grand Prairie that he named "Brooks," in honor of his father and his son.
At age 17, he had been headed down that wrong path like his dad, he said, convicted of robbery and sent to the Ferguson Unit where he joined the weight-lifting team. It was coincidence that the prison weight-lifting championship was held at the Ellis Unit, home to Death Row at the time. An assistant warden let Keith visit his father, the first of three meetings.
Charlie Brooks, who died a devout Muslim giving praise to Allah, tried to convert his son to Islam, Keith said.
While in prison, Keith said, he "gave my life to Christ at 18. I credit my whole existence to my relationship with Christ."
Keith is assistant director of the "Children's Church" at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Arlington, where his "father in the ministry" is longtime senior pastor N. L. Robinson.
Keith said he understands that the anniversary of his father's death calls attention to the death penalty in Texas and gives voice to the cause of trying to abolish this barbaric practice.
Charlie Brooks' case underscores the arbitrariness and capriciousness of capital punishment. He and co-defendant Woodie Loudres were sentenced to death, but Loudres' sentence was overturned because of jury-selection problems.
Loudres then pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Loudres has served his time and is now active in a church and in the Riverside community.
Hours after Brooks' execution, Jack Strickland, who had been lead prosecutor in the case, told ABC's
Good Morning America: "It may well be, as horrible as it is to contemplate, that the state of Texas executed the wrong man at 12:09 a.m."
Charlie Brooks' name is at the top of the state's list of executed individuals since 1982. There are 491 other names that follow.
Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays and Wednesdays.817-390-7775Twitter: @BobRaySanders
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