COP KILLER: CRAIG NEIL OGAN, JR. (EXECUTED IN TEXAS ON NOVEMBER 19, 2002)

On this date, November 19, 2002, a Cop Killer, Craig Neil Ogan, Jr. was executed by lethal injection in Texas. He was convicted of shooting Officer James C. Boswell on December 9, 1989. I will post the information about him from clarkprosecutor.org.

Craig Neil Ogan, Jr.

Officer James C. Boswell [END OF WATCH: December 9, 1989]

Summary: Ogan worked as a DEA informant in the Houston area. Despite explicit instructions to possess no deadly weapons, Ogan stepped out of his motel after an argument over long distance calls, armed himself, and walked across the street to a police car that had pulled over a vehicle for a traffic stop. Ogan went to the side of the police car and knocked on the window. Officer James C. Boswell rolled down his window and asked what Ogan wanted. Ogan responded, "DEA dropped me off out here, and I'm cold." Officer Boswell told Ogan to back away from the car until the officers finished the traffic stop. When Ogan persisted, demanding that Boswell give him immediate assistance, Officer Boswell took his gun from the holster and, holding it behind his right leg, reached into the police car to unlock the back door. Ogan then, without warning or provocation, shot Officer Boswell in the head. After seeing his partner fall against the back door of the police car, Officer Gainer chased and caught Ogan, wounding him in the process.

Citations:

Final Meal:

None.

Final Words:

"In killing me, the people responsible have blood on their hands, because I am not guilty. I acted in self-defense and reflex in the face of a police officer who was out of control." During his lengthy final statement, Ogan also complained of "police and prosecutorial perjury," which the courts ignored. The lethal injection was given while Ogan was still speaking. He was talking about Boswell's dealings with "enemy agents," when he paused, then lost consciousness. 

Internet Sources:

Texas Department of Criminal Justice - Executed Offenders (Craig Neil Ogan) 

Texas Attorney General Media Advisory

MEDIA ADVISORY - Friday, November 15, 2002 - Craig Neil Ogan Scheduled to be Executed. 

AUSTIN - Texas Attorney General John Cornyn offers the following information on Craig Neil Ogan, who is scheduled to be executed after 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2002. On June 29, 1990, Craig Neil Ogan was sentenced to die for the capital murder of police officer James C. Boswell, which occurred in Houston, Texas, on Dec. 8, 1989. A summary of the evidence presented at trial follows: 

FACTS OF THE CRIME 

In late 1989, Craig Neil Ogan moved to Houston, Texas, from St. Louis, Missouri, where he voluntarily acted as a confidential informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). A DEA agent acted as Ogan's supervisor in Houston. The DEA agent told Ogan that he could not carry a weapon under any circumstances, per DEA policy. He also told Ogan to "just let his face be known" around Houston and instructed him not to be involved in any drug deals. 

Despite these explicit instructions, Ogan insisted on arming himself and continued to seek involvement in drug transactions. On Dec. 8, 1989, Ogan called the DEA agent from a Houston restaurant. Ogan told him that a deal had fallen through and resulted in an armed confrontation. Ogan told the agent that he feared for his life and asked him to come to the restaurant and escort Ogan safely off the premises. 

The DEA agent arranged for Houston police officers Darryl O'Leary and Steven Hanner to escort Ogan out of the restaurant. Ogan asked the officers to take him to his apartment so that he could remove papers and tapes related to a DEA investigation. At Ogan's apartment, the officers observed Ogan pack his belongings, including what appeared to be a .38-caliber pistol, a sawed-off shotgun, and at least two hunting knives. Officers O'Leary and Hanner then followed Ogan as he drove to a motel. 

Ogan checked into his motel room and attempted to make several long-distance telephone calls, but the service was disconnected because Ogan had not left a deposit for long-distance calls. When Ogan went to the office to pay for his calls and to leave a deposit, he also complained that the heater in his room was not functioning. As he complained, he became louder and more upset, but eventually left the office area. 

A short time later, Ogan returned to the motel office and renewed his complaints. He told the desk attendant that he did not want to pay for his long-distance calls and wanted his money back. Ogan became more angry. The attendant threatened to call security at which time Ogan began kicking at the office door. The desk attendant then called 9-1-1 for assistance. Ogan left the motel, and, seeing a police car across the street, walked to the passenger side of the car and knocked on the window.
Houston police officers Morgan Gainer and James Boswell had pulled into the parking lot to stop a car for a traffic infraction, and were unaware of the dispute between Ogan and the motel clerk. In response to Ogan's knock, Officer Boswell rolled down his window and asked what Ogan wanted. Ogan responded, "DEA dropped me off out here, and I'm cold." Officer Boswell told Ogan to back away from the car until the officers finished the traffic stop. 

Ogan knocked on the window a second time. Officer Boswell opened the door and again asked Ogan to step back. Ogan told Officer Boswell that he was an informant for the DEA and that he was cold. Officer Boswell again told Ogan that he would have to wait. Ogan instead repeated his statement a third time. Officer Boswell told Ogan, "You need to get out of here if you are not willing to step out of the way and wait. You either need to leave, or you are going to jail." 

Officer Boswell then got out of the police car. Ogan demanded that Boswell give him immediate assistance. Officer Boswell took his gun from the holster and, holding it behind his right leg, reached into the police car to unlock the back door. Ogan then, without warning or provocation, shot Officer Boswell in the head. After seeing his partner fall against the back door of the police car, Officer Gainer chased and caught Ogan, wounding him in the process. 

PROCEDURAL HISTORY 

On June 25, 1990, Ogan was convicted in Harris County, Texas, for the intentional murder of Houston police officer James C. Boswell. After a separate punishment hearing, Ogan was sentenced to death on June 29, 1990. The conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The Supreme Court denied Ogan's petition for writ of certiorari on March 28, 1994. The Court of Criminal Appeals denied Ogan's application for state writ of habeas corpus on April 28, 1999. 

On Sept. 29, 2000, the district court denied Ogan's federal writ of habeas corpus, as well as his request for an evidentiary hearing and a certificate of appealability (COA). Ogan filed an application for COA to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 29, 2001, and the Director filed a response in opposition on Feb. 28, 2001. On Dec. 12, 2001, pursuant to the issuance of the Supreme Court's opinion in Penry v. Johnson, 532 U.S. 782 (2001), the Fifth Circuit requested that both parties file supplemental briefing regarding the applicability of Penry II to Ogan's case. After hearing oral argument, that court denied Ogan's request for COA on June 28, 2002. Ogan filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court on Oct. 30, 2002. 

PRIOR CRIMINAL HISTORY 

While Ogan had numerous unadjudicated assaults where charges were dismissed, he has no prior criminal record. 

Craig Neil Ogan, Jr.

ProDeathPenalty.com

A jury deliberated for five hours before they found Craig Neil Ogan Jr. guilty of killing a Houston police officer who had rejected his demand for immediate attention at a street scene. The officer's parents hugged and clasped hands after hearing the verdict. The many officers in the courtroom, tears in their eyes, slapped each other on the back and gave the thumbs up sign. "As far as I'm concerned, the worst is over," said Cecil "Sonny" Boswell, father of the slain officer, James C. Boswell , 29. "In our eyes, Jim was on trial." Martha Boswell, the officer's mother said, "It helps in that his memory is not besmirched." Whether Ogan received the death penalty was insignificant, the Boswells said after the verdict. "His death is not going to bring my son back," Sonny Boswell said. "I'm not going to lose a minute's sleep over it." Officer A.R. Northcutt, who worked and played golf with Boswell, called the verdict "a big relief. It lets people know that if you do this, you're not going to get away with it.' Prosecutors portrayed Ogan as a paranoid, quick-tempered "macho man" who dreamed of becoming a CIA agent. "He snuffed out one of our beautiful people, a man who only wanted to serve," prosecutor Rusty Hardin said.

After the penalty phase, the jury deliberated nine hours before sentencing Ogan to death. Boswell's mother, Martha Boswell of Meridian, Mississippi, voiced mixed feelings about her son's killer receiving the maximum penalty. "I feel like the evidence was there for the death penalty, just like it was for the verdict of guilty," she said. "We could've lived with anything the jury came back with, and killing Mr. Ogan isn't going to bring our son back, but he needs to be punished for what he did." The panel's 12:30 a.m. verdict came after they answered "yes" to three key questions, and the last one - did Ogan shoot Boswell on Dec. 9, 1989, without provocation by the officer - was important to the slain officer's partner, Morgan Gainer. "It's not something you can feel good about," Gainer said of seeing a man sentenced to death, "but at least Boz's name is clear now.' 

In convicting Ogan, 35, of capital murder, jurors spurned his lawyers' arguments that the fatal round was fired into Boswell's temple in self-defense. Ogan claimed the officer called him "a (f***ing) snitch" and tried to shoot him. Boswell, 28, was killed Dec. 9 on a South Main parking lot. Gainer said Ogan walked up to them, wouldn't abide by directions to wait and killed Boswell for not helping him immediately. Ogan had contended he feared that drug peddlers were out to kill him and he needed Boswell 's immediate attention. The officer was writing a traffic ticket, and a woman complainant was waiting to speak to him. 

Prosecutor Rusty Hardin said a key question for jurors - whether Ogan, 35, is likely to continue to commit acts of violence - was clearly established by his acts from 1981-88. Hardin described Ogan, a St. Louis marijuana peddler turned U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration professional tipster, as a violence-prone "peeping tom" voyeur with an explosive temper. In his testimony, Ogan had tried to downplay his volatile nature, but Hardin countered with testimony from the informant's former girlfriend, nurse Linda Dunajcik. She said their six-year, live-in affair was characterized by Ogan's mostly spurning her efforts to get him therapy for being a window peeper and having continual angry outbursts. Dunacjik said she doesn't believe in the death penalty, but that Ogan seems likely to keep losing his temper. "It could've been me," she said quietly. 

So on seeing Boswell's police unit stopped at the Stop N Go at South Main and Westridge, he said, he crossed the street to get help. Minutes later, Ogan shot Boswell, then was shot in the back by Boswell's partner, Morgan Gainer, as he was fleeing. Ogan repeatedly denied being mad when the fatal shot was fired, but he admitted he can lose his temper if pushed and, just before Boswell's killing, got angry enough at the motel's desk clerk that he kicked a door. "Did you feel Officer Boswell wasn't taking you seriously?" Hardin asked. "I felt Officer Boswell got very hostile," Ogan testified. Ogan steadfastly maintained that Boswell, faced with the defendant's persistent demands for help and refusal to just wait, jumped from his patrol car and fumbled for his gun. In several instances, Ogan has maintained Boswell was having trouble with his holster flap. But Hardin pointed out that Boswell 's holster had no flap. "All I know is he was fumbling for his gun," Ogan said. "I don't know if he had a flap. It all happened in seconds.' 

Ogan said his life was literally rerouted by reading the book "I Led Three Lives". It concerns a man who infiltrated Communist organizations, and from his teens that's the spy status Ogan strived to attain. On the witness stand, Ogan testified he tried for years to get an undercover job with the CIA. All his 1988-89 efforts for the DEA were aimed at getting him a job reference. From 1979 to 1985, St. Louis DEA agent Jerome Hutchinson said, Ogan is known to have sold 100-pound lots of marijuana from Florida every week in his home town. Hardin said the DEA viewed the pot dealer as a sort of "godsend." Not only did he have an established St. Louis import business that gave him a legitimate reason to travel abroad, Ogan spoke Spanish, French and Portuguese and desperately wanted to inform on his drug connections to get a CIA referral. 

Ogan's move to Houston came in October 1989 after a Missouri judge ordered some of his secretly made tape recordings turned over to attorneys for the targets of his investigations. In Houston, the DEA told Ogan to get an apartment and "make his face known" at two clubs frequented by Hispanics. He got into a dispute with three men he had been asking about buying kilograms of cocaine. They thought he was a "narc" and had a pistol-pointing confrontation with him outside a restaurant. The DEA told Ogan not to return to his apartment and got Houston police to take him to a motel. Ogan ended up at the Astro Motor Inn on South Main. On the night of Dec. 8, Ogan was unhappy about the heat not working in his motel room and was concerned that he had been found by some of the dealers he'd clashed with earlier. 

After a dispute with the motel's desk clerk, Ogan sat in his Yugo. Then, he said, he saw Boswell 's car parked across the street at a Stop 'N Go store. Boswell and Gainer were writing a traffic ticket, and a woman involved in a domestic disturbance was waiting to see them. Gainer said Boswell walked up to Boswell 's window and identified himself as a DEA informant. Boswell told Ogan to wait, but Ogan demanded help. Boswell again told Ogan to step back and wait. When Ogan kept talking, Boswell got out of his patrol car, gun held out of sight against his leg and was unlocking the vehicle's back door when the informant fired the fatal shot. After inexplicably shooting Boswell, Gainer said, Ogan muttered, "Well, (f***) you then," before fleeing. 

UPDATE: Defiant to the end, a former federal drug informant who aspired to be a CIA agent was executed for killing a Houston police officer 13 years ago. "In killing me, the people responsible have blood on their hands because I am not guilty," Craig Ogan said in a deliberate and firm voice. He described the details that preceded the officer's death and, as he has in the past, essentially blamed slain Officer James Boswell for the officer's death. Ogan said Boswell was a "police officer who was out of control." Ogan complained that the courts ignored what he said was evidence of "police and prosecutorial perjury." Without looking at relatives of the slain officer, who watched through a window a few feet away, he alleged that Boswell was angry and was still suffering from an on-the-job injury months before. As he paused briefly trying to collect his thoughts, the lethal drugs kicked in and Ogan snorted and coughed. He was pronounced dead at 7:13 p.m. CST, eight minutes after the lethal dose began.