In Texas, two lives in the balance

By Knight Ridder Newspapers and Chicago Tribune

ANDREW INNERARITY / AP Artist James Allridge is shown at the Texas penitentiary yesterday in Livingston, Texas. He is scheduled for execution tonight after 17 years on death row for the fatal 1985 shooting of a store clerk.

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To the family and friends of Brian Clendennen, Allridge is the portrait of a killer.

For 17 years, Allridge, 41, has been on Texas' death row for the shooting death of Clendennen, a 21-year-old Fort Worth convenience-store clerk during a 1985 crime spree. Allridge has become a self-taught artist whose colorful pictures of flowers and landscapes have brought him a small international following. His prison record has won him praise from several former correctional officials who say he no longer is a threat to anyone.

Allridge's lawyers contend in their last-ditch motion to the Supreme Court that the grounds on which Allridge was sentenced to death — that he was so violent that he presented a future danger to society — no longer are valid. They are seeking to have his scheduled execution tonight stayed, and they ultimately hope to have his sentence reduced to life in prison.

It is a long-shot argument, the lawyers acknowledge, in a state that has carried out more death sentences than any other. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Allridge's clemency bid Tuesday, leaving the Supreme Court as his last chance.

But Shane Clendennen, along with his brothers and his mother, says no amount of artistic flair or gentle behavior while behind bars is enough to stop the execution of Allridge.

"(James Allridge) was sentenced to death, it was a just sentence and it needs to be fulfilled now," said Shane Clendennen, the younger brother of Allridge's victim. "It's not hard to change on death row. Did he give my brother a chance to change and grow? Just because this guy stands up and says he's sorry for what he's done, well, I'm sorry for a lot of things I've done, too, but I still had to pay for it."

The case has attracted significant attention, spurred on by a death-row visit July 14 by actress Susan Sarandon, who bought some of the condemned man's art and exchanged letters with him for several years.

Sarandon, who won the Oscar for best actress in 1996 for her portrayal of anti-death-penalty crusader Sister Helen Prejean in "Dead Man Walking," appears on a video prepared by Allridge's lawyers in their appeal to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Allridge's supporters, including correctional officers and four of his jurors, insist his was no mere jailhouse conversion inspired by convenience or duplicity, but rather a sincere rehabilitation born of genuine remorse. They say Allridge was a friendly yet vulnerable youth with no criminal record until he came under the influence of a violent and sociopathic older brother whom he idolized.

The older brother, Ronald Allridge, spent much of James' childhood in prison on a manslaughter conviction; after his release, he persuaded James to join him in a spree of armed robberies, the first of which resulted in Clendennen's Feb. 4, 1985, murder in a convenience store.
 
Ronald Allridge also was sentenced to death, for a murder he committed a month later, and was executed in 1995. James helped calm Ronald and dissuaded him from violently resisting his guards on the way to the death chamber, one of the more dramatic examples of his prison peacemaking cited in his legal appeal.

Allridge doesn't claim that his brother's influence relieves him of responsibility for Clendennen's murder.

"First and foremost, let me say that I have never tried to escape punishment and have always, always felt deep sorrow for my actions," Allridge wrote in a letter this month to the Austin Chronicle newspaper.

The attention given to Allridge has angered Clendennen's relatives. Family members also are outraged that Allridge has earned profits selling artwork and note cards over the Internet. They note that Brian Clendennen, too, had artistic talent, and they still have an oil painting on display in Everman's City Hall.

"Now all I have is a picture and a grave site," said Shane Clendennen, who with other relatives plans to witness the execution.

Doris Clendennen, who reared her five children alone after being widowed at 34, at first said she could not bring herself to talk about her slain son. "I wish I could talk without crying," she said.

"Two weeks before he died, he told me, 'I want to go back to college.' He was real good in art," she said. "He was a real nice boy."

As for art sales from death row, Doris Clendennen said: "That is the worst thing that prison has ever done. I think that is so, so wrong."

Fort Worth Mayor Pro Tem Ralph McCloud, who lives on the same street as the Allridge family, has become an advocate for the condemned killer, whom he has visited in prison.

"It would be a terrible waste if he was executed," said McCloud, who was not a neighbor when James Allridge lived at home. "People like his artwork; they like his smile. If there is such a thing as rehabilitation, he's the beneficiary of it."

Tarrant County prosecutor Mike Parrish disagrees. "I think just like I did in 1987," Parrish said. "He saw a person that he knew, and he made a conscious decision to kill him."

Parrish says he is unmoved by the condemned man's claims of artistic talent and rehabilitation.

"I'm glad he's got some talent," he said, "other than killing people."