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Finally, on May 28, 2004, the court, following up on its criticism of Peasley in the Mi
Even with Peasley's disbarment, the story of the El Grande murders was not over. Just a few weeks before that decision, the Arizona court had issued another unanimous order: a warrant of execution for Martin Soto-Fong. The defendant, the court wrote, "shall be executed by administering to martin raul soto-fong an intravenous injection of a substance or substances in a lethal quantity sufficient to cause death, except that martin raul soto-fong shall have the choice of either lethal injection or lethal gas."
The Arizona state-prison complex, in Florence, sits on a barren stretch of desert about fifty miles off the main highway between Phoenix and Tucson. Inside the old prison yard is a small, one-story blue stucco structure that is identified on the outside as "Housing Unit 9." It's better known as the death house. The arrangement inside the building reflects the choice now available to Martin Soto-Fong. A carpeted room for spectators has one window facing the gas chamber and another facing the room holding the gurney used for administering lethal injections. (The only sign inside the building is an Air Quality Control Permit, issued by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality to "the Florence Prison Gas Chamber.") Meg Savage, a genial middle-aged woman who is a warden at one of the units in Florence, took me behind the window to the gas chamber itself, where the swinging metal door was open."You can sit in it if you like," she said.
Death row in Arizona has a dramatic history. In 1982, a condemned prisoner known as "Banzai Bob"Vickers killed another death-row inmate by setting him on fire; he soaked toilet paper with Vitalis, set it aflame, and threw it between the bars of the man's cell. (Vickers was executed in 1999.) In 1997, another condemned prisoner, Floyd Thornton, was weeding the prison vegetable garden when his wife drove up to the fence and tried to help him escape. She started shooting an AK-47 assault rifle and a.41-calibre revolver, but both Thornton and his wife were killed after guards returned the fire.These incidents, coupled with the general trend toward ever-greater prison security, have led Arizona to establish one of the most restrictive death rows in the country.
The condemned are now housed in a new prison building, known as Special Management Unit II, about two miles from the death house. They stay in their eight-by-twelve-foot cells all day, every day. They may take three showers a week and have up to ninety minutes of recreation, also three times a week.They may not take prison jobs. The recreation facility is a cement-walled twenty-three-by-eleven-foot pen with a rubber ball and a surveillance camera. For days at a time, many death-row inmates may not see another human being. "We are right up there with any super-max in the country," Meg Savage says.
Martin (pronounced Mar-TEEN) Soto-Fong is now thirty and has been on death row for eleven years. He's about five feet six, with a slight build. His ancestry is Chinese and Mexican; he's starting to lose the straight black hair that he had when he was arrested. His voice is soft, and his English has improved during his years in prison. "He's one of the quieter guys we have on death row," Lieutenant Gle
He shows some bitterness toward his former attorney Jim Stuehringer, who now represents Ken Peasley. "To this day, I hold some, you know, a bit of anger towards him, and I just feel very betrayed," he said. But he also says he's confident that he, like McCrimmon and Mi
Several years ago, during the bar proceedings against Peasley, Rick Lougee turned his attention to Soto-Fong.Working on his own time, along with a paralegal, Linda Lavis, Lougee became convinced of Soto-Fong's i
One day in Tucson, I asked Ken Peasley to take me to the El Grande Market. Reopened under new management and renamed Jim's, the market still looks much as it did in 1992, with long aisles full of inexpensive merchandise and a cash register near the front.
Standing by the entrance, Peasley narrated his version of how the murders took place, largely on the basis of the fingerprint evidence and the testimony of Keith Woods. "Soto-Fong went to the produce counter, which used to be in the back, and picked up some cucumbers and lemons," Peasley said. "He put them down on the counter, and something happened between him and Mr. Gee, the owner. Something happened between the two of them, and then it became a fucking shooting gallery. They got about three hundred dollars, a hundred dollars a body. Strange thing was, there was all kinds of money in cigarette cartons in the back, but they didn't see it or something, because it was still there after the murders.
"Fong had worked there, so he knew they would recognize him," Peasley went on. "So if he was going to allow somebody to recognize him, they were going in there with the idea of taking the money and killing the people who were there.To this day, that's what I believe happened." Fingerprints identified as Soto-Fong's were found on plastic bags (which had contained the lemons and cucumbers), as well as on a food stamp, and that helped to convict him.
Lougee has tried mightily to discredit the fingerprint evidence. At the murder scene, he says, Godoy collected and processed the plastic bags in a haphazard way, and delayed forwarding them to the crime lab. It isn't clear whether the food stamp with Soto-Fong's fingerprints is the one that appears in photographs of the scene, and there was conflicting testimony about whether it came from the cash register or had been found on the floor near Gee's body. (Since Soto-Fong had worked at the El Grande a few months earlier, it would be possible for his prints to turn up there.) At the time of the investigation, the fingerprint examiner, Timothy O'Sullivan, who had made significant errors in earlier cases, was suffering from terminal cancer and was heavily medicated, raising questions about his focus and attention. It is peculiar that O'Sullivan, who died before the trial in 1993, identified only Soto-Fong's prints on the evidence, and not those of anyone else who worked at the store. It is also odd that other produce bags at the store had a red line across the top but the one with Soto-Fong's prints, did not.