Perhaps she would not have done so if she'd known Walker had just served 22 years in prison for attempted murder, for having shot a tourist back in 1978. Or if she'd known that Walker, 46 then, had a history of drug use dating back to the dysfunctional home of his youth. Or, even yet, if she'd known that that man was still capable of killing an innocent person, as Walker would do that early Saturday morning, and then attempt to do so again the following day.
Then yet another woman walked out of the drug store; this one carrying a purse, a single mother of three prepubescent children at home, across the street, alone in their trailer. Her name was Christine Anziano, and she was retrieving pain medication for her middle child, who was 4, and whom she had just brought home from the emergency room after he had broken his arm. Perhaps if Walker had known that, he wouldn't have grabbed her purse, spun her around, stabbed her five times, once in the heart, and left her to stumble back into the drug store, where she collapsed and died waiting for medical help to arrive, her life spurting red and effusive out of her 33-year-old body and onto the Sav-On tile floor. Or perhaps he still would have.
For, at his trial, three and a half years later, in January 2007, charged with the murder of Anziano, Walker showed neither remorse nor repentance. Nor anything at all, in reality. All he did was wave to his family, who attended parts of his trial (for he still has people). And, moreover, because the day after he killed Anziano, Walker was impenitent enough to take his knife to another human being, slicing the throat of, then stabbing and robbing a Las Vegas man named Charles Cole, who had done nothing more to provoke the attack than to ask Walker for a ride home from the grocery store, and who survived the wounds to testify against Walker in court two months ago.
The jury at the trial convicted Walker of murder in the first degree with a deadly weapon, as well as two counts of robbery with the use of a deadly weapon, and attempted murder. And one week later, February 2, those same 12 jurors sentenced James Ray Walker to death. A decision that took the jury four hours to deliberate, but no doubt a whole lifetime of experience and thought for each juror to tolerate.
"Any time you're trying to convince a jury, you can't start from square one," says Scott Bindrup, the Clark County special public defender who advocated for Walker's life. "By that point you won't change their mind [on the actual issue of the death penalty]. So you have to show them your individual client is worth sparing. "James Ray Walker grew up in poverty in Vegas in the '60s. He was abandoned as a youth, lost two of his siblings to drugs. These aren't excuses, we told the jurors, but just bear these factors in mind, tie them into the crime, into why he might have done this terrible thing. That was his state of mind. Again, not excuses, but mitigating factors."
The chief deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case, Chris Owens, commended the jurors' decision, stating in court that by giving Walker the death penalty the jury had put a value on Anziano's life, had recognized the agony borne by her survivors and had finally brought about a sense of closure for those loved ones.
Anziano's mother, a Las Vegas woman who attended Walker's trial and sentencing, and who has now lost two children to the hands of other human beings, said, in court: "It's not going to bring her back, but I think it's what he deserved."
Bill Pelke, leader of multiple organizations dedicated to abolishing the death penalty, says he can sympathize with Anziano's mother, because he also once had a loved one murdered in cold blood. In fact, the chief organization for which he is chairman, Journey of Hope, is composed of similar people. And because he's been through it, he says, he now knows that the idea of closure "is a myth."
"There's still that empty seat at the table during holidays," Pelke says. "Until she settles that loss within herself, no execution is going to bring healing. Instead, it just cycles the suffering." Nevada is one of 36 states that sanctions capital punishment, and prosecutors say it is reserved for the worst of the worst criminals.
Bindrup says that when the jury decides to spare the life of the individual he's representing, he can put that case, that person, aside and move on. "But James Ray Walker," he says, "will stay with me forever."
On March 13, District Court Judge Valerie Adair formally announced Walker's death sentence. As a preface, she said:
"Of all the murder cases I've seen, dozens and dozens, this one stands out. It was horrible, it was completely random, and it was so excessive.
"I feel for Mrs. Aziano's mother."