Austin, TX: Family of Texas man set to die pleads for his life

By Corrie MacLaggan
AUSTIN, Tex. Wed Feb 16, 2011 6:10pm EST
AUSTIN, Tex. (Reuters) - Relatives of a man scheduled to be executed in Texas next week for killing his infant son pleaded on Wednesday for his life to be spared, saying that the family has already suffered enough.

After an argument with his wife in which he shot at her, Timothy Adams shot and killed his infant son, Tim, during a standoff with police in 2002, according to the Texas attorney general's office. Adam's execution, which would be the second in Texas this year, is set for Tuesday.
"This is a constant pain, day in and day out, that we're about to lose another member of our family," Adams' father, Columbus Adams, told a press conference at the Texas Capitol.

Columbus Adams was joined by several clergy members who are part of a group of more than 90 Christian leaders who wrote a letter to Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles asking that Timothy Adams' death sentence be commuted to life in prison without parole.

Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said that "the governor fully considers each case before making his final decision."

Adams' supporters said that his actions on that 2002 day were out of character and that he is not a danger to anyone. Adams' wife testified that her husband followed her and once told her that he hoped to catch her with another man so that he could kill them "right then and there." according to the attorney general's account of the case.

The Rev. Lawrence Scott of New Pleasant Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Houston, the Adams family's church, said at the press conference that it's time to break the chain of "murder for murder."

"He's a good man," Scott said of Adams. "What he did was horrible, but to take his life is not going to do anything for the situation. His mother can't sleep. His father can't sleep."
Seventeen people were executed last year in Texas, which has executed more than four times as many people as any other state since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

(Editing by Greg McCune)