PARENTS OF MURDERED BROTHERS SAY VICTIMS OVERLOOKED IN DEATH PENALTY DEBATE

Joe and Cindy Burch holding a photo of their two sons who were killed in the Blockbuster video store murders. Photo by Bill Wilson / The Anniston Star

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Parents of murdered brothers say victims overlooked in death penalty debate

Posted: Saturday, November 28, 2015 7:49 pm | Updated: 10:52 pm, Sat Nov 28, 2015.

By Tim Lockette, Star Staff Writer, tlockette@annistonstar.com

Like thousands of aging couples in thousands of towns across America, Joe and Cindy Burch while away the time between doctors’ appointments at a fast-food restaurant, talking about the world’s problems.

On this chilly day in early November, it’s the Arby’s on Quintard. The topic is the death penalty and the inmates who claim it’s cruel and unusual.

“They get more rights than some of our children, some of our elderly,” Cindy says, with a nervous chuckle.

“I believe in the right to live, but they’ve also earned the right to die,” Joe says.

They could be any couple in America, opining about crime a few steps from the soda fountain. Cindy chuckles nervously when she says something assertive. Joe leans in, taps the table with his fingers, looks you in the eye. When the point is made, he leans back and looks away.

They’re not just any couple.

“He suffered nothing,” Joe says.

“Well, to not know that his eight-year-old son … graduating … I think he was eight in 2002,” Cindy says. “To miss the wedding, miss the dating. But, I mean, we’re not going to get any of that.”

“No wedding, no grandkids,” Joe says.

“I want to be a good grandma,” Cindy says, her voice cracking.

“We will never have that,” Joe says. “Our family tree is done. He took away our family tree. It stopped right then, on May 15th.”

Deadly day

In 2002, if you lived in Jacksonville and wanted to see a movie on Wednesday night, you’d probably head to Blockbuster on McClellan, the biggest movie store for miles around. If someone warned you to be safe, you’d assume they were warning you to look twice before pulling out into the rush of traffic on Alabama 21.

The Burch’s sons, 19-year-old Andrew and 20-year-old Joseph, went out to grab a movie on a Wednesday night in May, and never came back. A customer found the Burch brothers and Blockbuster employees Austin Joplin and Doug Neal all shot dead inside the store.

A gun found at the scene led investigators to Donald Ray Wheat, of Clay County, who had already served a 10-year sentence for a 1971 manslaughter.

Police hailed Andy Burch as a hero: evidence at the scene suggested he fought back before being shot, and may have unsettled his attacker so much that Wheat fled the scene without his gun.

For Joe and Cindy Burch, parenthood was over, in the blink of an eye. Andrew and Joseph — acolytes at St. Luke’s, partners in a grass-cutting business, stunningly good bowlers who sometimes put in 20 games a day — were their only children.

Donald Wheat died of natural causes in prison, leaving two sons behind. But he’d been sentenced to death: to be strapped to a gurney, injected with poison and killed.

Joe and Cindy Burch still wrestle with that. With the fact that Wheat’s full sentence was never carried out. With the fact that, had he lived, Wheat would likely be at least a decade away from execution and still filing appeals.

“If you’re not going to use the death penalty, if it takes 25 or 30 years, just don’t do it,” Cindy Burch says. “You need to respect the death sentence.”

She’s no capital punishment opponent. It was Cindy who called the newspaper, after reading months of headlines about inmates’ legal battles to block their pending executions. The core of their argument – that lethal injection is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual – turns her stomach.

“Look what they do,” she said. “And then they’re crying, when it’s time for them to be put to death.”

A long wait

Last week, the state scheduled inmate Christopher Brooks for execution Jan. 21 for a 1992 murder.

If that execution happens, Brooks will be the first person to die by lethal injection in Alabama in more than two years. State officials seem as eager as ever to set execution dates for the 188 people now on death row. But the world around Alabama’s justice system has changed.

First, European drugmakers refused to supply the state with the drugs that once were the staple of execution by lethal injection. American companies followed suit. A leading pharmacists’ group this year discouraged its members from participating in executions. Every new proposed drug combination brings new legal challenges.

The ground of public opinion has shifted, too — nationwide, if perhaps not in Alabama. In 2002, the year the Burches buried their sons, a Gallup survey showed seven Americans in 10 supported capital punishment. This October, the number was 61 percent, nearly a 40-year low.

Even in conservative Alabama, the tone on crime is different than it was 20 years ago. Republicans have joined Democrats in saying prisons are overcrowded. The Burches have noticed.

“They’re saying they’re going to let out prisoners,” Cindy says, referring to the state’s plan to reduce the prison population by thousands, by reducing sentences for small-time thieves and drug offenders. She’s not convinced it will stop at non-violent criminals.

So much pain

In an hour of talk at their table, the Burches never lapse into the bumper-sticker talk — “an eye for an eye” — that characterizes so many conversations about capital punishment. But they can’t escape the idea that justice has to contain some measure of retribution.

“There’s so much pain there inside of me,” Joe says. “I cannot get it out. I tried. I cannot get it out.”

He remembers sitting behind Wheat in the courtroom. Joe was younger then, healthier. He knew that if he tried, he could have made it over the bench and landed at least one blow.

“If I would have hit him one time, I would have felt better,” he said. But Wheat was surrounded by police, “more protected than I would be protected in my whole life.” The law itself, in the person of a deputy, sat by Joe’s side during much of the trial. He doesn’t say whether the deputy was there to support him, or restrain him, or both.

“I know we’re supposed to forgive,” says Cindy. “The Lord is going to have to forgive for me until I can. I know forgiving is not for Him, it’s for us, and I want to do it. But if I say that out loud, I feel like I’m not loving my boys anymore.”

That’s about it, Cindy says. After reading so much about inmates in the paper, she just wanted to say her piece.

“I don’t know,” Joe says. “If you write about this, it’s going to get everybody up in arms about the death penalty. You’ve got all these church groups that don’t favor the death penalty. But they have never had anything like that happen to their family.”

“Possibly,” Cindy corrects.

“Possibly, you know,” Joe says.

He leans back, and looks away.