FLORENCE, Ariz. - Condemned killer Patrick Poland was manipulated by his older brother and shouldn't be executed for helping kill two armored truck guards, supporters told the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency today.
Poland, who appeared at the hearing, was scheduled to die by injection on Wednesday for the 1977 slayings. His brother, Michael Poland, was executed last year.
"Who planned the crime? Mike Poland. Who's idea was it? Mike Poland. Who controlled every aspect of it? Mike Poland. Who went along with it? Patrick Poland," his attorney Tom Gorman said today.
Gorman isn't the only one pleading for Patrick Poland's life. Two prosecutors and an FBI agent who helped put Poland on death row have said his life should be spared.
"There's degrees of culpability. It's clear Patrick's was less. The person most responsible for this crime is gone. Justice was served by executing Mike," said retired FBI agent Frank Mowrey.
Former U.S. Attorney A. Melvin McDonald and assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Jennings also want Poland's sentence reduced to life in prison.
Gorman, the Sedona-based attorney for Poland, said in an interview that his client was "dominated and controlled" by his older brother Michael.
Michael Poland, 59, was executed by injection in June.
"Patrick only broke free of Michael's control once they were in prison," Gorman said. "Patrick has expressed remorse for what he's done. The bottom line is, he's less culpable than his brother."
Assistant Attorney General Kent Cattani doesn't agree.
"While he may be somewhat less culpable than his brother, I don't think the propriety of Patrick's death sentence has been called into question."
The Poland brothers were dressed in fake highway patrol uniforms and were driving a rental car equipped with emergency lights when they stopped the guards' Purolator van on Interstate 17 near Cordes Junction on May 24, 1977.
The truck was ransacked of $288,000 in cash and coins. The guards - Cecil Newkirk and Russell Dempsey - were driven 250 miles to Lake Mead.
The next day, the Polands wrapped Newkirk and Dempsey in custom-made canvas bags weighted with rocks and pushed them from a rented boat into Lake Mead.
It took nearly a month for the guards' bodies to surface on the Nevada side of the lake.
The brothers were arrested in May 1978 - 51 weeks after the robbery-slayings - after spending $127,000 of the money in their hometown of Prescott.
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