July 2021 | Page 11 of 17 | My Crime Library

Mark Soliz Texas Execution

Mark Soliz was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of an elderly woman. According to court documents Mark Soliz was in the middle of an eight day crime spree when he shot and killed sixty one year old Nancy Weatherly. During the same crime spree Mark Soliz would murder another person however it was for Nancy Weatherly that he received the death penalty. Mark Soliz would be executed by lethal injection on September 10, 2019.

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A Texas death row inmate was executed Tuesday night for fatally shooting a 61-year-old grandmother at her North Texas home nearly a decade ago during an eight-day spate of crimes that included thefts and another killing. Mark Anthony Soliz, 37, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

He was convicted of the June 2010 slaying of Nancy Weatherly during a robbery at her rural home near Godley, located 30 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

Soliz was the 15th inmate put to death this year in the U.S. It was the sixth execution in Texas and the second in as many weeks in the state. Nine more executions are scheduled this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state.

State and federal appeals courts and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down requests by Soliz’s attorneys to stop his execution, with the most recent denial coming on Monday. His lawyers filed no other appeals, including to the U.S. Supreme Court, on Tuesday.

“I have represented Mr. Soliz for many years. Every legal tool in my kit was deployed to prevent this execution. The hope endures, the fight goes on, and the cause never dies,” Seth Kretzer, one of Soliz’s appellate attorneys, said in a statement.

Soliz’s lawyers had argued he suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which left him with brain damage. His attorneys said the disorder is the “functional equivalent” of conditions already recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as disqualifying exemptions to the death penalty, such as intellectual disability.

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“Our argument (was) the Supreme Court is extending that doctrine to fetal alcohol syndrome,” Kretzer said.

Prosecutors portrayed Soliz as a dangerous individual who killed Weatherly for a “pittance of property.”

Kretzer had argued in court documents that heavy drinking by Soliz’s mother during her pregnancy resulted in numerous problems for the inmate, including impulsivity, learning difficulties, and an IQ of 75 that is “considered borderline impaired.” An IQ of 70 or below is generally considered to be intellectually disabled.

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, combined with a chaotic and troubled childhood that included living with drugs and prostitution, left Soliz entering “adult life ill-prepared,” Kretzer wrote.

Jurors at his 2012 trial as well as previous appeals court rulings rejected Soliz’s claims that his actions were due to the impacts of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

At his trial, prosecutors said Soliz and another man, Jose Ramos, committed at least 13 crimes in the Fort Worth area over eight days in June 2010.

After fatally shooting a deliveryman around 6 a.m. on June 29, 2010, the duo later that morning drove in a stolen car to Weatherly’s home. Prosecutors say Soliz and Ramos forced their way into the home at gunpoint and ransacked the place, taking a television, cellphones and credit cards.

Prosecutors say Weatherly begged for her life and pleaded that Soliz not take her deceased mother’s jewelry box before she was shot in the back of the head.

A friend of Soliz’s told jurors Soliz had bragged to her about killing an “old lady” in a house in Godley, had laughed about the incident and ridiculed the lady’s “country” accent.

Police say Soliz confessed to killing Weatherly and ballistics and fingerprint evidence also tied him to the slaying.

Ramos was sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of Weatherly and the deliveryman, Ruben Martinez.

The Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of mentally disabled people but has given states some discretion to decide how to determine intellectual disability. However, justices have wrestled with how much discretion to allow.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office said in court documents filed earlier this month that the Supreme Court has not held that individuals with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder are exempt from capital punishment and that Soliz has not presented an expert opinion stating he is intellectually disabled.

The attorney general’s office said in its motion with the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals that a Fort Worth police detective testified Soliz was “more sophisticated, calculated, and dangerous” than his partner Ramos and that “Soliz was the most dangerous person with whom he had come into contact” in his 16 years as a police officer.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-execution-today-mark-anthony-soliz-killed-61-year-old-grandmother-eight-day-crime-spree-2019-09-10/

Billy Crutsinger Texas Execution

Billy Crutsinger was executed by the State of Texas for the murders of two elderly women. According to court documents Billy Crutsinger would break into the home and murder Pearl Magouirk and her daughter, Patricia Syren. The two women who were aged 89 and 71 years old were found dead two days later. Billy Crutsinger would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Billy Crutsinger would be executed by lethal injection on September 4, 2019

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In 2003, an 89-year-old woman and her 71-year-old daughter were stabbed to death in their Fort Worth home. On Wednesday, Texas executed Billy Crutsinger for the crime.

Crutsinger was sentenced to death for the home robbery and slayings of Pearl Magouirk and her daughter, Patricia Syren. The two women were found two days after their murders, and police tracked Crutsinger to a Galveston bar using Syren’s credit card, according to court records.

In Tarrant County, Assistant Criminal District Attorney and lead prosecutor Michele Hartmann said Tuesday the loss of the mother and daughter “is still felt deeply by their family and the Fort Worth community.”

After his last appeals were denied by the U.S. Supreme Court just minutes before his execution was scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., Crutsinger, 64, was strapped to a gurney in the death chamber in Huntsville. No relatives of the women were present to witness the execution, according to a prison spokesman. Crutsinger had three friends in the viewing room, who, in his final words, he thanked for coming and supporting other death row inmates. Into the microphone hanging above his head, he said the system “is not completely right,” but he was at peace and was going to be with Jesus and his family.

“I am going to miss those pancakes and those old time black and white shows,” he said. “Where I am going everything will be in color.”

Crutsinger was then injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 6:27 p.m., and pronounced dead 13 minutes later, according to the prison department. He was the fifth person executed in Texas this year and the 14th in the country.

After the murders, Crutsinger was arrested — albeit illegally — after he didn’t identify himself to police in Galveston. He consented to a DNA swab that linked him to the crime scene and confessed to the murders while in custody, the records state.

A judge ruled that police were not justified in arresting Crutsinger on the spot for credit card abuse because they didn’t have a warrant, and he didn’t commit the crime of failure to identify himself before his arrest. Still, despite the illegal arrest, the judge found his confession and DNA sample were admissible evidence in court because the police conduct was not “purposeful or flagrant,” and there was probable cause for his arrest, just not a warrant.

During his nearly 16 years on death row, Crutsinger appealed his sentence arguing against the legal validity of his confession and DNA sample. But more recently, he pointed to his lawyers’ failings.

Crutsinger argued that his trial lawyer failed to adequately investigate mitigating factors that could have swayed the jury to hand down a sentence of life in prison instead of execution. Specifically, he claimed the attorney overlooked evidence of mental impairment caused by alcohol addiction, head trauma, depression and low intelligence, according to a recent federal district court ruling.

His most recent lawyer, Lydia Brandt, had also knocked his state appellate lawyer — claiming his incompetence and the courts’ refusal to grant investigatory funding kept Crutsinger from any meaningful appeals process. She noted that a judge in another capital case found Crutsinger’s state appellate lawyer “sloppy” and lacking professionalism, and that his filings were “poorly done and of minimal assistance to the court,” according to Crutsinger’s petition.

“The State of Texas denied Mr. Crutsinger his initial right to one full and fair opportunity to present his claims concerning violations of his fundamental constitutional rights,” Brandt wrote in a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court last week.

Brandt did not respond to The Texas Tribune on Tuesday.

The federal courts, as well as the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, rejected his arguments. U.S. District Court Judge Terry Means ruled last month that despite a lack of funding for Crutsinger to investigate it, Means fully addressed the merits of the ineffective counsel claim and found it was without merit. He referred to trial records that revealed the lawyer presenting multiple witnesses at the phase of trial where jurors weigh questions that lead to life in prison or death, including prison officers who testified to his good behavior and family members who described his grief and issues with drinking.

According to the testimony of his ex-wife and wife at the time of trial, Crutsinger had lost a newborn daughter; his toddler son to drowning; his teenage son to lymphoma; his brother from illness; his father, who was hit by a car; and his sister, who was killed in a car crash in which he was driving.

“The assertions that the denial of funding precluded a true merits review and that trial counsel’s representation was egregious, border on frivolous,” Means wrote. “… His conclusion that trial counsel failed to explore his alcoholism, his ‘personality change’ after a single drink, his history of domestic violence and abuse, and his repeated losses of significant friends and relatives, is completely false.”

Earlier rulings in Crutsinger’s case from the federal district court and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have been highlighted by the U.S. Supreme Court, though, when pointing out that the appellate court overly limited investigatory funding. Although the courts reexamined the case and still denied funding and declined to reopen the case for further review, one appellate judge split from his court’s ruling.

Judge James Graves on the 5th Circuit court said last week he would stop Wednesday’s execution. He said earlier that Means’ ruling on the merits of Crutsinger’s claim came before he had any funds to further investigate the issue, so it was not yet developed for such a ruling.

“The court concluded that Crutsinger must prove his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel to be able to establish that ‘investigative, expert, or other services are reasonably necessary’ to then be able to prove his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel,” Graves wrote in a dissent in July. “Such a circular application is illogical … . A defendant who has already proven his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel would have no need for additional investigative, expert, or other services.”

There are 10 other Texas executions scheduled through December.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/09/04/billy-crutsinger-execution-texas/

Larry Swearingen Texas Execution

Larry Swearingen was executed by the State of Texas for the sexual assault and murder of a college student in 1998. According to court documents Larry Swearingen would abduct, sexually assault and murder 19 year old Melissa Trotter. Larry Swearingen lawyers argued that their client was cleared from the brutal murder due to DNA however the supreme court felt differently. Larry Swearingen would be executed by lethal injection on August 22, 2019

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A Texas man with a history of violence against women was put to death Wednesday for the abduction, rape and murder of a suburban Houston community college student over 20 years ago.

Larry Swearingen, 48, who argued his conviction was based on junk science, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the December 1998 killing of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter.

She was last seen leaving her community college in Conroe, and her body turned up nearly a month later in a forest near Huntsville, about 70 miles north of Houston.

Swearingen, who had always maintained his innocence in Trotter’s death, was the 12th inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the fourth in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Eleven more executions are scheduled in Texas this year

Prosecutors said they stood behind the “mountain of evidence” used to convict Swearingen in 2000. They described him as a sociopath with a criminal history of violence against women and said he even tried to get a fellow death row inmate to take the blame for his crime.

Swearingen had long tried to cast doubt on the evidence used to convict him, particularly claims by prosecution experts that Trotter’s body had been in the woods for 25 days. His longtime appellate attorney, James Rytting, said at least five defense experts concluded her body was there for no more than 14 days, and because Swearingen had been arrested by then on outstanding traffic violations, he couldn’t have left her body there.

Swearingen, who also was represented by the Innocence Project, had previously received five stays of execution. He was put to death after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal, which focused on allegations prosecutors used “false and misleading testimony” related to blood evidence and a piece of pantyhose used to strangle Trotter.

Kelly Blackburn, the trial bureau chief for the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Swearingen, said the killer’s efforts to discredit the evidence were unsuccessful because his experts’ opinions didn’t “hold water.”

“I have absolutely zero doubt that anybody but Larry Swearingen killed … Melissa Trotter,” he said.

Blackburn said Swearingen killed Trotter because he was angry that she had stood him up for a date. At the time of Trotter’s killing, Swearingen was under indictment for kidnapping a former fiancée.

“Lord, forgive them,” Swearingen said after the warden asked if he had a final statement. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Then as the lethal dose of pentobarbital began, he said he could “hear it” going into a vein in his arm, then that he could taste it.

“It’s actually burning in my right arm. I don’t feel anything in the left arm,” he said.

Almost immediately, he took a short breath, then started to snore quietly. He stopped moving.

He never opened his eyes and never looked at the witnesses who were there on his victim’s behalf, including her parents, who watched through a window just a few feet from him.

At 6:47 p.m. CT — 12 minutes after the lethal dose started — Swearingen was pronounced dead.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-executes-man-with-history-of-violence-against-women-for-1998-slaying-of-college-student

Stephen West Tennessee Execution

Stephen West was executed by the State of Tennessee for the murders of a mother and her daughter in 1986. According to court documents Stephen West would attack the mother and her fifteen year old daughter who would also be sexually assaulted before both victims were stabbed to death. Stephen West would be executed by way of the electric chair on August 15, 2019

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Tennessee executed its third inmate in the electric chair since November, killing a man Thursday who maintained that he didn’t stab a mother and her 15-year-old daughter to death in 1986. State officials pronounced 56-year-old Stephen West dead at 7:27 p.m. at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

For his final words, West said, “In the beginning, God created man.” Then he started to cry and continued, “And Jesus wept. That is all.”

This week, West decided he preferred to die in the electric chair after previously voicing no preference, which would have defaulted him to lethal injection. His attorney in a court filing wrote that the electric chair is “also unconstitutional, yet still less painful” compared with the state’s preference of a three-drug lethal injection.

Attorneys for inmates David Miller and Edmund Zagorski made the same arguments before they chose to die by the electric chair in 2018. Both unsuccessfully argued to courts that Tennessee’s procedure, which uses the drug midazolam, results in a prolonged and torturous death.

Tennessee has put two inmates to death by lethal injection since August 2018.

In Tennessee, condemned inmates whose crimes occurred before 1999 can opt for the electric chair.

West’s attorney has argued that some “feasible and readily implemented alternative methods of execution exist that significantly reduce the substantial risk of severe pain and suffering” compared with the state’s three-drug protocol or electrocution: a single bullet to the back of the head, a firing squad, a “euthanasia oral cocktail” or one-drug pentobarbital, according to a February court filing.

West was one of four death row inmates who sued last year, asking a federal court’s permission to use a firing squad as an execution method. Currently, just three states — Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah — continue to allow the use of firing squads. However, the last time that method was used was in 2010.

The last state other than Tennessee to carry out an execution by electrocution was Virginia in 2013, according to Death Penalty Information Center data.

West was found guilty of the kidnapping and stabbing deaths of 51-year-old Wanda Romines and her 15-year-old daughter, Sheila Romines. He also was convicted of the teenager’s rape.

In a clemency plea to Gov. Bill Lee, attorneys for West wrote that his then-17-year-old accomplice Ronnie Martin actually killed both Union County victims. West was 23 at the time. Their cases were separated, and while West was sentenced to death, Martin pleaded guilty as a juvenile and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole in 2030.

In a court filing, the state said West brutally stabbed the victims to death. An expert at West’s trial concluded two people were involved in stabbing the teen.

Regardless of the arguments about who killed the women, Tennessee is one of 27 states that allow executions of “non-triggermen” convicted of involvement in a felony resulting in a victim’s death, even if they didn’t kill anyone themselves, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

West’s clemency filing says the jury never heard a jail recording from Martin saying he carried out the killings, not West. But a 1989 state Supreme Court opinion rejected the recording as uncorroborated hearsay that wouldn’t have exonerated West.

West’s attorney opted against playing the tape at sentencing because the judge would have allowed other recordings in which Martin incriminated West, court records show.

The governor denied West’s clemency application, which also said West had been taking powerful medication in prison to treat mental illness.

West’s attorneys also said the jury didn’t hear about his abusive upbringing because his parents paid for his lead lawyer. They wrote that the abuse created conditions that made West freeze in response to traumatic events.

Another Tennessee execution is scheduled for December.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tennessee-electric-chair-stephen-west-execution-today-2019-08-15/

Marion Wilson Georgia Execution

Marion Wilson was executed by the State of Georgia for a murder committed in 1995. According to court documents Marion Wilson and Robert Butts would shoot and kill Donovan Parks during a robbery. Both men would be sentenced to death. Robert Butts would be executed in 2018 and Marion Wilson would be executed by lethal injection in 2019. Marion Wilson was the 1500th execution in the United States since the death penalty returned in the 1970’s

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A Georgia inmate convicted of the 1996 shotgun slaying of a man who had agreed to give him and another man a ride outside a Walmart store was executed Thursday evening.

Marion Wilson Jr., 42, was pronounced dead at 9:52 p.m. following an injection of the sedative pentobarbital at the state prison in Jackson, the office of the Georgia attorney general said in a statement.

Wilson and Robert Earl Butts Jr. were convicted of murder and sentenced to death for the shotgun slaying of 24-year-old Donovan Corey Parks in Milledgeville, a community in rural Georgia about 90 miles southeast of Atlanta.

Wilson was convicted in November 1997 of malice murder, armed robbery, hijacking a motor vehicle, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and possession of a sawed-off shotgun. Butts was found guilty of the same charges about a year later.

Butts, who was 40, was executed in May 2018.

Wilson’s execution came after the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, the only authority in Georgia that can commute a death sentence, denied his clemency request. Efforts by his lawyers to get the courts to intervene also were unsuccessful.

The killing occurred on March 28, 1996, after Parks went to a Walmart to buy cat food, leaving his car right out front. A witness heard Butts ask Parks for a ride, and several people saw them getting into Parks’ car, according to a Georgia Supreme Court summary of evidence and the testimony presented at trial.

Butts was in the front passenger seat and Wilson was in the back as they left. A short distance away, the men ordered Parks out of the car, shot him in the back of the head, and stole his car, prosecutors said.

At Wilson’s trial, while asking the jurors to impose the death penalty, Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Fred Bright said Wilson “blew [Parks’] brains out on the side of the road.” A year later, during the sentencing phase of Butts’ trial in front of a different jury, Bright said Butts “pulled the trigger and blew out the brains of Donovan Corey Parks.”

Lawyers for each man seized on that discrepancy to argue that their client wasn’t the triggerman and shouldn’t be executed. State lawyers argued that it doesn’t matter who fired the fatal shot, that both men participated in the crime.

Wilson’s lawyers noted that Bright later said under oath that he believed Butts was the shooter. They argued that while Wilson knew Butts probably intended to rob someone that night, he didn’t know that Butts planned to harm or kill anyone and that Wilson played no active role in the slaying.

Wilson’s sentence was, therefore, unconstitutionally excessive and disproportionate, his lawyers had argued in an unsuccessful court filing. Bright also deliberately misled the jury about Wilson’s role to secure a death sentence in violation of his right to “a fair and reliable sentencing proceeding,” Wilson’s lawyers wrote.

State lawyers countered that Bright repeatedly said throughout the trial that it wasn’t clear which man fired the gun, but they said there was enough evidence that Wilson participated in the killing to merit a death sentence.

Wilson’s lawyers had also written in a clemency petition that his childhood was characterized by abuse, neglect, and instability that led him to engage in criminal behavior that escalated as he got older. But they said the prosecution exaggerated Wilson’s juvenile criminal record and provided misleading speculation on his gang involvement.

Wilson was the second prisoner executed by Georgia this year. He was the 1,500th put to death nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/nation-world/georgia-execution-marion-wilson-jr-walmart-killing-20190621.html