Judge denies mother’s appeal on behalf of son on death row

Sandra Chereb

Thursday, March 11, 1999 | 5:15 a.m.

RENO, Nev. -- Alvaro Calambro is mentally competent to waive appeals of his death sentence for the January 1994 killings of two workers at a Reno U-Haul business, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben rejected a petition from Calambro's mother, who sought to appeal on her son's behalf.

Lydia Calambro had claimed her son is mentally ill and incapable of understanding his decision to proceed with his execution by lethal injection for the killings of Peggy Crawford and Keith Christopher.

Alvaro Calambro, 25, has said he wants to see his death sentence carried out without further court appeals.

In a 16-page ruling, McKibben said Calambro may have a low I.Q., personality disorders and difficulty understanding English, but he was still legally competent to decide his own fate.

"Calambro has given a knowing, intelligent and voluntary waiver of his right to proceed," McKibben wrote. "He is competent to make that choice. He has the capacity to understand the choice between life and death and to knowingly and intelligently waive his rights to proceed further.

"Calambro has accepted his sentence. The people of Nevada are entitled to have the sentence carried out."

The judge added that "all the psychiatrists and psychologists who have responded directly to the question of Calambro's legal competence have concluded that he is legally competent."

Michael Pescetta, a federal public defender for Lydia Calambro, said an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is likely.

"That's the next step," he said. "Unless there is something in this ruling that would be shocking, I would expect we will be pursuing it in the 9th Circuit."

Calambro could delay his execution if he said he wanted to appeal.

"That's the problem," Pescetta said. "This person doesn't get it.

"He has been diagnosed as mentally ill repeatedly, and the problem that he has is, he believes this death sentence can't be wrong because anything the government says must be true," Pescetta said.

Pescetta added that Calambro has also admitted to a prison psychologist that he made up some things that may have contributed to his receiving the death sentence during initial his penalty hearing.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a related challenge regarding Lydia Calambro's petition that made its way through the state court system.

The killings occurred during a $2,400 robbery at the U-Haul business where Calambro's crime partner, Duc Huynh, had just been fired. The victims' were gagged and their wrists were bound to their ankles.

Crawford had a tire iron driven through her skull. Christopher's head was crushed by repeated blows with a large ball-peen hammer.

Huynh also got the death sentence but hanged himself at Ely State Prison.

After the killings, Huynh and Calambro fled and were arrested following a crime spree that began in Sacramento and ended with a high-speed highway chase, the kidnapping of a woman security guard in Los Angeles, and a 9 1/2-hour standoff.