http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5170885.html

Sept. 27, 2007, 10:36PM
Condemned Dallas inmate wins reprieve

By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE - A condemned killer avoided the
nation's busiest death chamber Thursday night
when the U.S. Supreme Court gave him a reprieve.

Attorneys for Carlton Turner Jr., a suburban
Dallas man condemned for killing his parents, had
appealed to the high court hoping the justices'
review of lethal injection procedures in
Kentucky, announced earlier this week, could keep him from execution.

In a brief, one paragraph order the court said it
had granted his stay of execution. The order came
more than four hours after he could have been
executed and less than two hours before the death
warrant would have expired at midnight CDT.

"All I can say is all glory to God," Turner told prison officials.

The Supreme Court order made no mention of its
reasons for stopping the punishment.

Turner, 28, said he didn't find the prospect of
death frightening but was concerned about
possible pain from the lethal injection, which is
the foundation of the appeal in the Kentucky case.

"The only thing I worry about is when the process
is starting, the suffocation and pain if the
anesthesia doesn't work," he told The Associated
Press last week from death row. "They say it's
like drowning. I'm hoping it's not like that.

"But you're dead after that. So it's not torture.
You're not coming back. To me, it's not something I would be scared of."

Turner's case was being watched as an indicator
of whether executions in Texas, the nation's
busiest death penalty state, could be halted
until the high court rules on the Kentucky case sometime next year.

Another execution is scheduled for next week, one
of at least three more set for this year in Texas.

Turner, 28, has acknowledged fatally shooting his
parents at their suburban Dallas home in 1998.

"The only thing that matters is I did what I
did," he said. "This is the byproduct of something stupid that I did."

Turner was 19 when authorities said he shot
Carlton Turner Sr., 43, and Tonya Turner, 40,
several times in the head. He then bought new
clothes and jewelry and continued living in the
family's Irving home. Prosecutors said Turner had
dragged the bodies through the house before
dumping them in the garage, then cleaned up the
blood and had friends over that weekend for a party.

Neighbors called police after they hadn't seen
the couple in several days and saw Turner acting
strangely and driving his parents' cars, which they prohibited.

Turner had been a disciplinary problem as a
juvenile and at age 14 sexually assaulted an
8-year-old boy. He was arrested at home on
warrants for outstanding traffic violations.
Police also found him carrying marijuana. He said
he also was on probation for aggravated robbery.

Turner, who said he became interested in the
occult and satanism when he was as young as 10,
said he remembered parking in front of his house
and police waiting down the street and pulling up behind him.

"I figured eventually they'd start looking," he said.

Later that day - at least three days after the
shootings - a foul smell led police to the bodies in the garage.

Turner, who was adopted as an infant, testified
at his trial he shot his father in self-defense
after repeated instances of abuse.

"I felt my mother couldn't live without my
father," he said, explaining the shooting of his
mother. "It didn't make any sense for her to live without him."

Turner's parents were retired from the Air Force.
His father worked in sales after retiring to the
Dallas area about a year earlier. His mother worked at a department store.

"Of course, what I did was wrong," he said.
"There was a time when I had justification, but that's all wrong.

"I look at life as it is. These are the cards
I've been dealt with. To tell the truth, I'm not sad at all right now."

Tom D'Amore, one of the prosecutors, said
Turner's case was "a horrible cold-blooded
execution of two people who didn't deserve it."

"They had tried all kinds of things with him,"
D'Amore said. "At some point, he was the type of
person, as I recall, it was his way or he would
take matters into his own hands. And unfortunately, he did."

Another execution is scheduled for next week. A
28-year-old Honduran man, Heliberto Chi, is set
to die for the 2001 slaying of Armand Paliotta,
the manager of a Fort Worth clothing store, during a robbery.