his heroes in the hood were gangster rappers
Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 12:04 am
and cops were considered evil, but what does he do, kill a man on his job and legally taking care of his family and loved ones 
Killer Influenced by Rap Music
Source: Associated Press
by Michael Graczyk
10/06/2005
HUNTSVILLE, Texas--Condemned inmate Ronald Ray Howard remembers the Texas state trooper pulling him over, then walking up to the side of his sport utility vehicle as gangsta rap music played on the radio.
"How you doing?" Trooper Bill Davidson said to the then 18-year-old Houston man.
"But I was already in motion," Howard recalled Wednesday from a small cage in the visiting area of death row at a prison outside Livingston. "I'd already shot as I hear him saying that."
Within hours, Howard was caught in Victoria, not far from the shooting scene along U.S. Highway 59 near Edna. He wrecked the SUV, which he had stolen, by crashing it into a house, then tried to flee on foot.
When Davidson, 43, died three days later after never regaining consciousness from the 9 mm bullet wound to the neck, Howard was charged with capital
murder.
Howard was set to die Thursday evening.
The lethal injection would make Howard the 14th convicted killer executed this year in the nation's most active capital punishment state.
Attorneys were in the federal courts trying to block the punishment.
"It's nerve-racking, not scary," Howard insisted Wednesday, a day before he was scheduled to die.
The music blaring from the radio made the slaying more notorious. At Howard's trial, his lawyers blamed hours and hours of incessant gangsta rap music _ with lyrics advocating the death of police officers _ as contributing to his actions. The defense sparked a national debate on the violence-laden anti-police music and censorship..
"He grew up in the ghetto and disliked police and these were his heroes, these rappers ... telling him if you're pulled over, just blast away," his trial attorney, Allen Tanner, recalled last week. "It affected him. That was a totally valid serious defense. It really was."
"I'm not a psychologist," Howard said Wednesday. "So I don't know. I never said: Yes it did or no it didn't. I don't know. But my lawyers thought it could have caused it. And they were trying to justify, put reason, for what I did."
Howard had no complaints about the legal strategy, saying Tanner "did his best with what we had."
But Howard said the shooting was also the result of being pulled over by police "plenty of times" in his hometown of Houston and never having good experiences with officers.
At the time of the April 1992 shooting, the 18-year-old father of four was on probation for stealing a motor vehicle. He acknowledged Wednesday that he stole "a lot of cars" but said it was the normal activity for kids in his Houston neighborhood.
"It's all about joy riding," he said. "When you think about people on death row, you think of monsters, non-sociable people who can't help but hurt other people. That's not who I am."
Jurors in Austin, where Howard's trial was moved because of publicity in Jackson County, convicted the seventh-grade dropout after 40 minutes of deliberations. The same panel deliberated six days before deciding Howard should die.
Howard told a grand jury he was listening to "Soulja's Story" by Tupac Shakur before he shot Davidson. The song makes references to a young black male being pulled over by police, remembering Rodney King whose videotaped beating by Los Angeles police led to deadly riots in 1992, then opening fire on an officer. Shakur was gunned down in 1996 in Las Vegas, a slaying that remains unsolved.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Howard's death sentence in 1996 because a potential juror improperly was eliminated from the jury pool. At that second trial, in Corpus Christi in 1999, Howard again was sentenced to die.
Testimony showed Howard was a drug dealer and gang member. Prosecutors argued the rap music defense was a diversion intended to mitigate Howard's viciousness.
Department of Public Safety Maj. Art Garza, who worked out of the agency's Edna office with Davidson, recalled his former partner and colleague this week as "a good husband, great father, excellent trooper and good friend."
"He wore that uniform so proudly," Garza said. "I always knew Bill Davidson as just a strong man. I don't remember him ever being scared. He was a true police officer. What a great guy. We miss him."
Howard said he hoped those who favored his execution would "let go of the hate. It's like a cancer. It destroys people."
Howard was one of three Texas inmates with execution dates this month. At least six are scheduled for November and another in December.