Dateline: 02/18/00
Updated: 2/24/00
On Feb. 24, 2000, a 62-year-old hearing-impaired, learning-disabled, brain-damaged great-grandmother and battered woman was executed by the State of Texas for killing the man who battered her.
Are you outraged?
Betty Lou Beets was convicted in 1985 of killing her fifth husband, Jimmy Don Beets, in 1983. She had said he had disappeared while on a fishing trip, then later filed a claim for death benefits from his former employer, the City of Dallas. Two years after his "disappearance," authorities found his body buried in the yard of her home. Ms. Beets was also indicted, but never tried, for killing a former husband, Doyle Barker, whose body was also found buried in the yard. Both men had been shot in the back of the head with a .38 caliber pistol and wrapped in a sleeping bag. Ms. Beets has also pled guilty to shooting her second husband, who survived the shooting.
Are you still outraged?
No? I have to admit that the above information gave me pause as well. But why? She is still the same hearing-impaired, learning-disabled, brain-damaged great-grandmother and battered woman, executed for killing her batterer. Do we require victims to remain victims in order to be outraged about their victimization?
Would it make a difference if I told you that the only reason she was sentenced to death was because of that insurance claim? It was not the murder itself that made the crime eligible for the death penalty, it was seeking those benefits after the murder. In the eyes of the trial jury, Betty Lou Beets had killed her husband for that insurance money, making it "murder for remuneration" - a "capital" crime (a crime eligible for capital punishment) in Texas. What the jury did not know was that she only filed the claim on the advice of an attorney she contacted for help when her trailer burned down, 18 months after her husband allegedly "disappeared." The jury did not know this because the only person who could testify to that fact was the attorney himself, E. Ray Andrews. But E. Ray Andrews, the attorney who had suggested that she file the claim, was the same attorney who was representing her in her murder trial - in return for the media rights to her story.
If E. Ray Andrews had testified that Ms. Beets had been unaware of the insurance and pension benefits until he, himself, had suggested filing a claim, Ms. Beets would not have been charged with a capital crime. The death penalty would not have been a sentencing option. Yet he did not testify on her behalf because, under Texas law, he would have had to withdraw from the case if he had. If had withdrawn from the case, he would have had to give up the media rights he had acquired from Ms. Beets. And, according to affidavits from his friends, he was counting on those media rights to make him rich. Years later, Andrews admitted under oath that his client had no prior knowledge of any benefits from her husband’s death, and that he had investigated the availability of the benefits so that he could get paid for his representation of her in her fire insurance claim. After the Beets case, Andrews was elected to the position of District Attorney in Henderson County, and has since been convicted and imprisoned on a felony charge of soliciting a bribe to "fix" another capital murder case.
The jury also did not know that Ms. Beets had suffered both physical and sexual abuse since the age of five, including repeated blows to the head, which left her with organic brain damage. Her abuse started with an alcoholic father and mentally ill mother, and continued across more than 40 years, through five husbands and seven marriages, including her marriage to Jimmy Don Beets. They did not know that she left her abusers more than once, only to suffer worse beatings once they found her again. Would it have made a difference if they knew that she went to the police again and again, only to find that they would not help her escape from her abuser, nor would they protect her from further abuse. In short, what if they had known that Betty Lou Beets had spent her whole life being schooled in hopelessness? E. Ray Andrews never introduced that information to the jury during the trial, despite the existence of photos, hospital records and police reports documenting the abuse she had suffered.
Now, are you outraged again?
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