Appeals court halts hearing while victim was testifying that he wanted to meet with condemned man.

By Steven Kreytak

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Published: 10:40 p.m. Wednesday, July 20, 2011

It was almost 8 p.m. Wednesday when Rais Bhuiyan finally got a chance to tell a judge why his attacker's execution, also scheduled for Wednesday evening, should be delayed so he could meet the man who tried to kill him.

"I would love him to explain, why? How?" said Bhuiyan, who was shot in the face by Mark Stroman during a crime spree in 2001 that left two of Stroman's other Dallas-area victims dead.

"When he shot me, I was bleeding," Bhuiyan said, crying. "What was going through his mind? Did he ever think about his kid? I'm somebody's kid as well."

Bhuiyan's poignant testimony was cut short when visiting state District Judge Joe Hart learned that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had issued an order prohibiting him from continuing.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Stroman's appeals, and he was put to death about 9 p.m.

"I would say that we just repealed the victims' rights act in Texas," said Bhuiyan's lawyer, Khurrum Wahid of Florida.

Bhuiyan, a 37-year-old from Bangladesh who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, was working as a convenience store clerk in Dallas in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when he was shot by Stroman, who according to testimony at his trial was a white supremacist who said he was out for revenge. Stroman has said his sister died in the attacks, but prosecutors have said there is no proof of that.

Stroman also fatally shot Waqar Hasan in his Dallas convenience store, and Vsudev Patel, a gas station attendant in nearby Mesquite. Both were immigrants — Patel from India and Hasan from Pakistan.

Bhuiyan, who works at a travel website, has said that his Muslim faith calls on him to forgive Stroman and that he wanted to break the cycle of violence and spare Stroman's life. He said he believes that Stroman was a product of his upbringing and has changed since the attack.

But his court bid focused solely on delaying the execution. He sued Gov. Rick Perry and Texas prison and parole officials this month in state District Court in Travis County, claiming that his rights as a crime victim had been violated. Particularly, he said, he was never told that the prison system offered mediation to victims of crime who want to speak with an offender.

Bhuiyan told Hart that the attack left him blind in one eye, ruined his marriage and threw him into deep depression and poverty.

"I couldn't believe I had to go through this in the best country in the world," he said.

He said that had been told during the prosecution of the case to avoid speaking to Stroman and that he only began to rebuild his life during a spiritual awakening on a trip to Mecca in 2009.

Asked by his lawyer why he wanted to speak to Stroman, Bhuiyan said: "I want to see him. I want to talk to him in person. I want to connect with him in a human way. I want to know many things, many questions."

Earlier in the day, Wahid, Bhuiyan and other members of his legal team were in federal court asking U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel to delay the execution. Yeakel denied the bid, saying he did not have the legal right to intervene, a decision that was later affirmed by an appellate court.

During the court hearings, Bhuiyan had by his side Paula Kurland, whose daughter, Mitzi Johnson Nalley, 21, was stabbed to death in a brutal 1986 attack in North Austin. Jonathan Nobles was executed in 1998 for the crime, and Kurland said she was only able to move on with her life after speaking to Nobles weeks before his execution.

"This is a life-changing event," Kurland said of the prison mediation.

As he left the Heman Sweatt Travis County Courthouse on Wednesday night, Bhuiyan looked shocked.

"He's gone," he said of Stroman. "Who's going to give me my answers?"

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Source: http://www.statesman.com/news/local/man-executed-after-appeals-run-out-1629850.html