Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir by Gary Taylor Page B

recognize this system as rife
with opportunity for cronyism or abuse, and Catherine Mehaffey
would be no exception when she eventually entered my life a year
later.

    THIRTEEN
    Late 1970s

    Each capital murder trial in those
early years of the new process promised its own special twist.
Early in my tenure came the trial of "Sleeping" Billy Wayne White,
who, at age twenty in March of 1977, became the youngest killer
sentenced to death to that date from Harris County. I gave him his
nickname and made him an international celebrity.

    Billy had capped a short but
illustrious juvenile record by killing a sixty-five-year-old woman
who ran a furniture store with her husband. Billy shot her dead
while robbing the couple in their store, killing her in front of
her husband without provocation and for no reason anyone could
fathom. No one could figure why he left the old man alive to
testify at his trial, either. Billy had no defense and presented no
witnesses. His court-appointed attorney, Leroy Peavy, emerged as
his only hope. I discussed the case with Peavy before trial and
eagerly awaited the event. It was to be Peavy's first death penalty
defense, and he planned to put capital punishment on trial. He
boned up for weeks, gathering all facts ever used against capital
punishment. He knew Billy would never win an acquittal on the
evidence. But Peavy hoped he could turn jurors against the system
itself and convince them to sentence his client to life in prison
instead of death.

    I watched as Peavy began his
impassioned plea. But I couldn't hear him clearly. Another sound
was drowning him out. I looked around for signs of a broken air
conditioner or some other mechanical malfunction and saw nothing.
Then I spotted Billy at the defense table. While his lawyer begged
for his life, Billy had laid his head on the table and gone sound
to sleep. Billy wasn't just dozing. He snored like a big dog just
home from a run in the park. Jurors poked each other and pointed at
Billy while Peavy continued, pretending to ignore him. The lawyer
resembled a singer who forgets the lyrics but continues to hum with
the melody because the show must go on. Once Peavy completed his
summation, however, he succumbed to his own disgust and that only
made things worse. Taking his seat beside Billy as the prosecutor
rose to offer the state's final argument, Peavy tried to nudge
Billy with an elbow and jostle him awake. Billy raised his head,
glanced at Peavy, and then waved him away with one of his hands
while clearly mouthing the words: "Fuck off, asshole."

    The jury deliberated all of thirty minutes
before sending Billy to Death Row, and the wire services picked up
my front page story to share it with the world. I felt sympathetic
for Peavy as the hard working advocate, but he seemed unfazed the
next day. He smiled and told me he would appeal the conviction on
the grounds his client suffered a sleeping ailment and could not
assist with the defense. So, for two days in a row, Sleeping Billy
made front page news in Houston and around the world. The State of
Texas eventually executed Billy on April 23, 1992, after exhausting
all appeals.

    About a year after Billy became the
county's youngest immigrant to Death Row, eighteen-year-old Anthony
"Bo Peep" Williams dislodged him from the record books. Bo Peep
earned his nickname from the neighborhood where he had gained a
reputation for peeking around trees and corners while hiding from
other kids who generally wanted nothing to do with him. One night
in 1977, Bo Peep was cruising through a bowling alley parking lot
when he saw thirteen-year-old Vickie Lynn Wright walking to her
sister's car. Vickie was really excited because this was the first
time her parents had ever let her accompany their older daughter to
bowl. She had left something in the car and went outside to
retrieve it. But she never made it back inside. Bo Peep grabbed
her, took her in the nearby woods, raped her, and then beat her to
death with a