When Dallas County’s district attorney announced he wouldn’t seek the execution of a man suspected in at least 24 killings, some of the families of the dead and the DA’s political critics shifted their hopes to another venue just across the county line.
Citing logistical challenges, District Attorney John Creuzot told the families he was going to focus on obtaining consecutive life-without-parole prison sentences for Billy Chemirmir, who has been charged with 13 counts of capital murder in Dallas County after he was accused of smothering elderly women and stealing their jewelry, cash and other valuables.
But Chemirmir could still face the death penalty on five similar charges in Collin County.
Dallas County will prosecute him first, and a conviction there would mean an automatic life sentence in prison without parole. Creuzot’s office confirmed recently that he will not seek the death penalty, after initially filing paperwork to do so in July 2019.
After Dallas County’s proceedings are complete, Collin County will have a chance to try Chemirmir for cases in Frisco and Plano.
A spokesman for the Collin County district attorney’s office declined to predict whether it would do so, saying the office doesn’t comment on pending cases.
State Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, said last week that he hopes Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis will step up where he says Creuzot walked away.
In response to the deaths, Patterson filed a series of bills during the recent legislative session to improve senior security and change death certificate procedures. Now, he has called on Willis to seek the death penalty, calling Creuzot a “coward” on Twitter.
“It’s a pattern we’re seeing in Dallas of lawlessness being acceptable,” Patterson said Wednesday, pointing to Creuzot’s decisions not to prosecute some minor crimes such as low-level theft. “If you are going to murder 18 to 24 people and not get the death penalty, then what are we doing?”
Tasha Tsiaperas, a spokeswoman for Creuzot’s office, declined to comment, but the office previously issued a written statement saying that the district attorney hopes to secure convictions against Chemirmir in two jury trials and ask a judge to order that the life-without-parole sentences imposed be served consecutively.
“In effect, there will be no chance for Mr. Chemirmir to die anywhere except in a Texas prison,” the district attorney’s office said.
Along with the 18 charges of capital murder, Chemirmir has been linked through lawsuits, death certificate amendments and police records to six more deaths. He is in the Dallas County jail with bail set at $17.6 million. He has said he is innocent.
‘He deserves the death penalty’
According to a recording obtained by The Dallas Morning News, Creuzot told families in May that he would not seek capital punishment in part because of the time and effort required to secure a death penalty verdict.
Creuzot said the appeals process in any death penalty case is lengthy and the details of the case could pose even more legal hurdles. Lawyers would have to travel to Kenya to research Chemirmir’s past before he immigrated to the United States. Also, Chemirmir’s good behavior in the Dallas County jail would make it difficult to prove he is too dangerous to be kept alive, Creuzot said.
A Kenyan immigrant with permanent resident status in the U.S., Chemirmir could face deportation if he were released.
Robert MacPhee, whose mother, Carolyn MacPhee, was killed at her home in Plano in December 2017, said Creuzot’s decision didn’t surprise him.
Like other relatives of people Chemirmir is accused of killing, though, MacPhee was more upset by the district attorney’s plan to dismiss nearly a dozen other cases after securing two convictions.
Robert MacPhee’s parents had hired Chemirmir as an at-home caregiver for his father. Months after his father died, MacPhee said, Chemirmir returned and killed his mother, leaving his blood on her glasses. He has been charged with capital murder in her death.
MacPhee said that he wasn’t sure whether life in a prison cell or execution would be a worse punishment but that he didn’t want taxpayers to pay to keep Chemirmir alive for the rest of his natural life.
“He deserves the death penalty,” he said. “If he doesn’t deserve it, gosh, I don’t know who else does.”
MacPhee said he’d spoken with Willis’ office since hearing Creuzot’s decision, and he hopes Collin County will seek the death penalty, even though he knows it may be some time before the case makes its way through the court system.
“We figured this is just going to be an ongoing process,” he said. “We’re in Collin County, so maybe that’s a different deal.”
Fewer death penalty cases
Creuzot’s decision aligns with national and statewide trends to seek the death penalty less often. Only 24 states allow capital punishment. Three others have governor-imposed moratoriums and 23 have legislative bans, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
In Texas, the number of executions each year has declined since an all-time high of 40 in 2000. That’s partly because of a 2005 law that automatically imposes life without parole for any capital murder conviction in which prosecutors do not seek execution. In other words, a capital murder conviction in Texas means a defendant will be sentenced to die in prison, whether naturally or by injection.
Willis, in Collin County, has sought the death penalty once before, for a man who killed a Richardson police officer in a February 2018 shootout. Creuzot’s initial decision to file paperwork seeking death for Chemirmir was the first and only time he has done so.
The decision to seek the death penalty is more than politics. Only in the strongest of cases and under the most extreme circumstances do prosecutors seek capital punishment, said Toby Shook, a defense attorney and former prosecutor. As a prosecutor, he worked several high-profile death penalty cases, including the Texas Seven prison escapees in 2000 and the murders of Kaufman County prosecutors in 2013.
“Politics of your constituents weigh into a lot of things, but in a death penalty case they’re going to make that decision based on the evidence and the facts of the case,” he said.
Shook also said Collin County’s decision to seek the death penalty would have to wait until after the Dallas trials. Even then, he said, it may be difficult to successfully try a death penalty case because Dallas is likely to prosecute the case with the strongest evidence against Chemirmir first.
“It’s premature for the Collin County district attorney to seek the death penalty or not,” he said. “The strongest case is in Dallas County and they didn’t seek death. That may weigh into another jurisdiction’s decision.”
Possible ‘milestone’ for Dallas County
Rick Halperin, director of SMU’s Embrey Human Rights Program, said it’s unlikely that Chemirmir could receive a sentence of life without parole in Dallas County, only to have that sentence increased to death in another county.
“I would be shocked if that is what’s allowed to occur,” he said.
Halperin, who has worked to end the death penalty, pointed to the prosecution of Gary Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer. Ridgway agreed to plead guilty in 2003 and show prosecutors in Washington state where he dumped the bodies of 49 victims in exchange for life without parole. Two of the victims were killed in Oregon, which allows the death penalty, but he has not been tried for those murders and probably will die in a Washington prison.
Halperin said Creuzot’s decision not to seek the death penalty has the potential to be a “milestone” for Dallas County. If the county has decided not to seek execution for such crimes as the ones Chemirmir is accused of, Halperin said, it could be difficult to justify seeking it in other cases.
“He’s made it morally indefensible to seek the death penalty anytime in the future if the number of victims is less than this,” Halperin said. “If 18 doesn’t merit it, then how can anyone think less than 18 merits it?”
He called the prosecutorial discretion on whether to seek execution “arbitrary,” and he pointed to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 as an example. Timothy McVeigh, convicted of killing eight FBI agents, was sentenced to death. His accomplice, Terry Nichols, was convicted of killing the 160 other victims of the bombing and was sentenced to life without parole.
If the death penalty is reserved for the “worst of the worst” offenders, Halperin said, inconsistencies like those show the imprecision of such definitions.
“Whatever the death penalty is, it’s not measured in numerical number of victims,” Halperin said. “Anyone who has had a family member lost to homicide would say it’s the worst experience possible.”
Patterson said it was not only the number of victims, but also the nature of the crimes — elderly victims killed for cash — that makes Chemirmir deserve to die.
“He took advantage of and murdered elderly residents who didn’t have any way to fight back,” Patterson said. “That’s the worst of humanity.”
