July 2021 | Page 9 of 17 | My Crime Library

John Battaglia Texas Execution

John Battaglia was executed by the State of Texas for the murders of his two young daughters. According to court documents John Battaglia was involved in a bitter divorce with his ex wife and decided the best way to get revenge was to murder his six and nine year old daughters while he was on the phone with her. John Battaglia would be executed by lethal injection on February 1, 2018

John Battaglia More News

John David Battaglia went out with a joke and a grin

Battaglia, 62, offered no apologies and showed no remorse for killing his daughters at his Deep Ellum loft in 2001.

He seemed jovial, strapped to a gurney while witnesses arrived to watch his execution at the state’s Huntsville Unit.

As they filed in, he looked around and asked, “How many people are there? Oh, that’s a lot.”

The one-time accountant even said hello to his ex-wife, Mary Jean Pearle, who was there to watch him die.

“Well, hi, Mary Jean. I’ll see y’all later. Bye,” he said. “Go ahead, please.”

He closed his eyes for several moments, and shortly after the lethal injection was administered, he looked at the chaplain at his feet, smiled and asked, “Am I still alive?”

Battaglia grinned and then sighed.

“Oh, here, I feel it,” he said.

It took about 22 minutes for him to be pronounced dead at 9:40 p.m.

Battaglia was the third man executed this year in the nation, all in Texas, and the second killer from Dallas put to death this week.

His execution brought an end to a lengthy legal battle to spare his life. He was twice granted a stay so his mental competency could be evaluated, and his attorneys filed last-ditch efforts Thursday to delay the execution.

Battaglia received national attention in May 2001 after he gunned down his 9-year-old daughter, Faith, and 6-year-old Liberty at his Deep Ellum loft while their mother listened helplessly on the phone.

At the time, he was on probation for hitting his ex-wife, the girls’ mother, and she had been trying to have him arrested for violating that probation.

“Mommy, why do you want Daddy to have to go to jail?” Faith was told to ask her mother, moments before the girl begged for her life. “No, Daddy. Don’t do it.”

Last week, his attorneys filed a request for a stay of execution to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying that Battaglia did not fully understand why he was being put to death.

“Although he is aware of the state’s rationale for his execution, he does not have a rational understanding of it,” appellate attorneys Michael Mowla and Gregory Gardner wrote.

Battaglia, himself, said in a 2014 interview with The Dallas Morning News that he didn’t recall committing the crime and still considered the girls his “best little friends.”

“I don’t feel like I killed them,” he said.

In his Texas appeals, his attorneys wrote that Battaglia was “convinced that his trial and conviction were a sham” and that his death sentence was all part of a conspiracy involving “the KKK, child molesters and homosexual lawyers.”

On Thursday, one woman stood outside the prison unit with a pink poster board that bore a photo of John Battaglia and the words “Texas executes mentally ill.”

A state judge and the state appeals court, however, described Battaglia as highly intelligent, competent and not mentally ill. They argued he was faking mental illness to avoid execution.

Testimony at a hearing showed John Battaglia used the prison library to research capital case rulings on mental competence and discussed with his father the “chess game” of avoiding execution.

The last-minute federal appeal filed Thursday alleged that the execution violated Battaglia’s constitutional rights because Texas was using expired drugs for the lethal injection.

Court records show Battaglia’s attorneys argued that William Rayford, the other killer from Dallas executed this week, tried to sit up and jerked his head after the lethal drugs were administered.

Rayford’s execution was delayed for a couple of hours because of late appeals to stay his punishment.

But as Battaglia’s execution neared, his appeals were struck down one after another: The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal that argued a lower court improperly refused his lawyers money to hire an expert to further examine legal claims he’s mentally incompetent for execution. Attorneys also took an appeal related to that issue to the Supreme Court. The high court, too, denied the complaint.

Pearle, the killer’s ex-wife and the mother of his victims, was at the Huntsville Unit on Thursday to witness his execution — almost 17 years after she listened to Faith and Liberty die and pleaded for them to run away from their father.

On Thursday, she leaned in as close as she could to the window separating the witnesses from the death chamber. Pearle watched as Battaglia’s breathing grew heavy and then stopped.

“I’ve seen enough of him,” Pearle said as she walked away.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/courts/2018/02/02/john-battaglia-taunts-ex-wife-before-being-executed-for-killing-their-girls-while-she-listened-in-horror/

William Rayford Texas Execution

William Rayford was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of an ex girlfriend. According to court documents William Rayford would murder his ex girlfriend and attempt to murder her eleven year old son. At the time William Rayford was on parole for murdering his wife. William Rayford would be executed by lethal injection on January 31, 2018

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After the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal for a stay, Texas executed William Rayford on Tuesday night for murdering his ex-girlfriend in 1999. At the time, he was on parole for killing his wife in 1986.

Rayford, 64, was the second Texas inmate to die by lethal injection this year. He filed multiple late appeals, claiming that his sentencing trial for murdering his ex-girlfriend was tainted by racial prejudice. He claimed that he was wrongly denied federal funding to allow further investigation of evidence in hopes of a lighter sentence from the jury.

In November 1999, Rayford entered 44-year-old Carol Hall’s house, began arguing with her, then stabbed her 11-year-old son in the back and chased her out of her Oak Cliff home. Her body was later found 300 feet inside a drainage pipe behind her home.

A Sunday school teacher, Hall had defended her relationship with Rayford, claiming it was her Christian duty to give him a second chance although he had stabbed his estranged wife in front of their four children. Her son later testified at Rayford’s trial that he had watched Rayford carry his mother toward the drainage pipe where her body was later found beaten, stabbed repeatedly and strangled.

Rayford was arrested at the scene. Hall’s blood covered his face and clothing.

In his petition to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in early January, Rayford’s lawyers introduced new claims that Rayford had brain damage caused by lead poisoning from a decades-old bullet fragment in his body and exposure to contaminated water when he was a child.

They also argued that his case mirrored the case of death row inmate Duane Buck. In February 2016, the appeals court ruled that Buck’s case was prejudiced by an expert trial witness and resentenced him to life in prison. Rayford’s lawyers claimed that he had experienced the same issue in his case when the state’s expert witness said that the racial makeup of prison units factors into prison assaults.

Rayford’s appeal was denied Friday. The court ruled that although lead poisoning wasn’t mentioned in the sentencing for the 1999 murder, Rayford’s defense brought up his mental illness, substance abuse and difficult childhood, none of which excuses beating, strangling and knifing an ex-girlfriend or stabbing her child.

Judge Barbara Hervey wrote that the state’s expert witness didn’t give any opinions about race in Rayford’s trial, unlike the expert witness from Buck’s trial, who claimed Buck would be a future danger to society because he was black.

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-executes-william-rayford-for-killing-ex-girlfriend-while-on-parole-for-killing-wife-10314824

Anthony Shore Texas Execution

Anthony Shore was a serial killer who was executed by the State of Texas for multiple murders. According to court documents Anthony Shore would murder three girls and one woman over a fourteen year period. Shore who was known as the tourniquet killer for his preference of wrapping a ligature around the victims neck and would tighten it with a pencil or a toothbrush. Anthony Shore would be executed by lethal injection on January 18, 2018

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Texas carried out the nation’s first execution of 2018 Thursday evening, giving lethal injection to a man who became known as Houston’s “Tourniquet Killer” because of his signature murder technique on four female victims.

Anthony Allen Shore was put to death for one of those slayings, the 1992 killing of a 21-year-old woman whose body was dumped in the drive-thru of a Houston Dairy Queen.

In his final statement, Anthony Shore, 55, was apologetic and his voice cracked with emotion.

“No amount of words or apology could ever undo what I’ve done,” Shore said while strapped to the death chamber gurney. “I wish I could undo the past, but it is what it is.”

As the lethal dose of pentobarbital began, Shore said the drug burned. “Oooh-ee! I can feel that,” he said before slipping into unconsciousness.

He was pronounced dead 13 minutes later at 6:28 p.m. CST.

“Anthony Allen Shore’s reign of terror is officially over,” Andy Kahan, the city of Houston crime victims’ advocate, said, speaking for the families of Shore’s victims. “There’s a reason we have the death penalty in the state of Texas and Anthony Shore is on the top of the list. This has been a long, arduous journey that has taken over 20 years for victims’ families.”

Shore’s lawyers argued in appeals he suffered brain damage early in life that went undiscovered by his trial attorneys and affected Shore’s decision to disregard their advice when he told his trial judge he wanted the death penalty. A federal appeals court last year turned down his appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case and the six-member Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously rejected a clemency petition.

Shore’s attorneys said his appeals were exhausted. They filed no last-minute attempts to try to halt his execution.

In 1998, Anthony Shore received eight years’ probation and became a registered sex offender for sexually assaulting two relatives. Five years later, Shore was arrested for the 1992 slaying of Maria del Carmen Estrada after a tiny particle recovered from under her fingernail was matched to his DNA.

“I didn’t set out to kill her,” he told police in a taped interview played at his 2004 trial. “That was not my intent. But it got out of hand.”

Estrada was walking to work around 6:30 a.m. on April 16, 1992, when he she accepted a ride from him. The former tow truck driver, phone company repairman and part-time musician blamed his actions on “voices in my head that I was going to have her, regardless, to possess her in some way.”

He also confessed to killing three others, a 9-year-old and two teenagers. All four of his victims were Hispanic and at least three had been raped. Jurors also heard from three women who testified he raped them.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who as an assistant prosecutor worked the then-unsolved Estrada case, said crime scene photos showed Estrada was tortured and had suffered as a stick was used to tighten a cord around her neck.

“I know this case, I know his work and the death penalty is appropriate,” she said. “A jury in this case gave Shore death. … I think he’s reached the end of the road and now it’s up to government to complete the job.”

Besides Estrada, Shore confessed to the slayings of Laurie Tremblay, 15, found beside a trash bin outside a Houston restaurant in 1986; Diana Rebollar, 9, abducted while walking to a neighborhood grocery store in 1994; and Dana Sanchez, 16, who disappeared in 1995 while hitchhiking to her boyfriend’s home in Houston.

Sanchez’s body was found after a caller to a Houston TV station provided directions on where to find it. Police believe Shore was the caller.

Shore’s execution originally was set for last October but was delayed for an investigation after another Texas death row inmate concocted a scheme to get Shore to take responsibility for his crimes.

In 2017, 23 convicted killers were put to death in the U.S., seven of them in Texas, more than another state. Three more inmates are scheduled to die in Texas in the coming weeks

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/tourniquet-killer-anthony-allen-shore-executed-texas-1992-strangling-n839056

Travis Runnels Texas Execution

Travis Runnels was executed by the State of Texas for a prison murder that took place in 2003. According to court documents Travis Runnels would murder prison supervisor Stanley Wiley on Jan. 29, 2003. Travis Runnels who was serving a 70 year sentence for armed robbery was upset that Wiley prevented his transfer to the prison barbershop. Travis Runnels would be executed by lethal injection on December 12, 2019

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A Texas inmate was executed by lethal injection Wednesday evening for killing a supervisor at a state prison shoe factory in Amarillo nearly 17 years ago.

Travis Runnels, 46, was convicted of slashing the throat of 38-year-old Stanley Wiley on Jan. 29, 2003. Runnels was executed at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

Prosecutors say Runnels killed Wiley at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Clements Unit in Amarillo because he didn’t like working as a janitor at the shoe factory. They said Runnels had wanted to transfer to a job at the prison barber shop and was angry at Wiley because that hadn’t happened.

Runnels, belted to the death chamber gurney, responded “no” when the warden asked whether he had a final statement. As the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began, he smiled and mouthed words and a kiss toward three female friends and two of his attorneys who watched through a window a few feet from him. Then he blurted out, “Woof, woof!” just before taking four quick breaths and snoring four times before all movement stopped

Runnels was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. Central time, 22 minutes after the drug began flowing into his arms, making him the 22nd inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the ninth in Texas.

He never looked at the sister and brother-in-law of his victim, who watched through a window in an adjacent witness room.

Outside the Huntsville Unit prison, several hundred Texas corrections officers stood in formation, and Wiley’s sister, Margaret Robertson, hugged or shook the hands of many of them as she and her husband left the prison.

Runnels had been serving a 70-year sentence for an aggravated robbery conviction in Dallas when he killed Wiley with a knife used to trim shoes. The factory makes shoes for inmates in the state prison system.

The execution was delayed about an hour until the U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal by Runnels’ attorneys, who said that a prosecution witness at his 2005 trial provided false testimony and that no defense was presented because his lawyers advised him to plead guilty and called no witnesses.

Janet Gilger-VanderZanden, one of his more recent attorneys, said Runnels changed during his 14 years on death row.

“There is true and authentic remorse for the death of Mr. Wiley. There are no excuses, rather there is a commitment to finding some kind of light in what was once a world of only darkness,” Gilger-VanderZanden said.

Lower courts and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had also turned down Runnels’ attorneys’ requests to stop his execution.

Four inmates who were convicted in the deaths of state correctional officers or other prison employees have been put to death since 1974, while three others remain on death row, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

At the factory, Runnels approached Wiley from behind, pulled his head back and used enough force for the knife to go through his trachea and cut Wiley’s spinal cord.

“It was cowardly,” prosecutor Randall Sims told jurors at Runnels’ trial.

Wiley, who grew up in the Texas Panhandle city of Amarillo, began working as a state corrections officer in 1994. He was later promoted to a supervisory position.

Inmate Bud Williams Jr., who also worked at the shoe factory, testified that Wiley “was a good guy.”

At his trial, Runnels’ lawyers didn’t present any witnesses or evidence, including information about Runnels’ troubled childhood and family history of drug and alcohol abuse, Gilger-VanderZanden said.

In their petition to the Supreme Court, Runnels’ attorneys argued that his death sentence was mainly a consequence of the testimony of prison expert A.P. Merillat, who told jurors that inmates like Runnels could not be held in a secure environment if sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the death sentences of two inmates, in 2010 and 2012, after ruling that Merillat gave jurors incorrect information.

The Texas attorney general’s office pointed to assaults by Runnels on other guards after Wiley’s death, including throwing feces and a light bulb at them, as evidence that he was a future danger and merited a death sentence.

In his clemency petition to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Runnels included letters from more than 25 individuals from around the world who said Runnels had worked to make amends for what he did.

“He has become a light that shines bright even in the darkest of spaces. The tragedy that he is responsible for will only be compounded if his valuable light were to be extinguished,” Kristin Procanick, from Syracuse, N.Y., wrote in one of the letters.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-12-11/texas-executes-travis-runnels-prison-supervisor-death

Lee Hall Tennessee Execution

Lee Hall was executed by the State of Tennessee for the murder of a woman in 1991. According to court documents Lee Hall would murder Traci Crozier, during a domestic dispute. Lee Hall would douse the woman in gasoline and set her on fire. Lee Hall would be executed by way of the electric chair on December 6, 2019

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Lee Hall was executed Thursday night at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. It was the sixth in a string of executions in Tennessee since a nine-year lapse ended in 2018, and the fourth of those to be in the electric chair.

At 7:13 p.m., a black curtain lifted. On the other side of four rectangular windows, Lee Hall looked from side to side and rolled his tongue in his mouth. Then he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

At 7:14, the warden asked for his last words. Hall said he needed water. Then, he mumbled something, barely audible. But three words came through clearly: hope, forgiveness and love.

At 7:18, the first current jolted Hall’s body in the chair. His fists clenched. Then he slumped back down. The second time, a puff — maybe steam, maybe smoke — rose from the right side of his head. Within minutes, his hands turned blue, and he was pronounced dead.

But Staci Wooten says Hall was no victim. He killed her sister, Traci Crozier, during a domestic dispute 28 years ago.

“Now our family’s peace can begin. But another family’s hell has to begin,” Wooten said after the execution. “Today will not bring my sister or my dad’s daughter back. But now, may she find her peace in heaven with our mom.”

Wooten called Hall a monster. Hall threw a lit container filled with gasoline and paper towels at Crozier during an argument in 1991, burning her alive.

Wooten said she felt a duty to give her sister a voice.

“We all fought this battle for you, Traci,” she said. “And today, we won.”

Hall’s family also provided a statement after the execution, delivered by his attorney, John Spragens.

“We are devastated by the loss of Traci and now Lee. Lee loved Traci more than anything, and we welcomed her into our family and loved her too,” Spragens read. “Now we have all lost, but we find peace in knowing that they are both with the Lord.”

Hall’s family thanked the prison staff and fellow inmates who supported him as he lost his vision. While on death row, Hall became legally blind.

Hall’s brother, David Hall, watched the execution from the witness room, seated between an attorney and a religious advisor.

As prison employees shuffled through the execution chamber, before the curtain lifted, David shrugged off his jacket and leaned forward in his seat. He watched as staff members wrapped Hall’s head and ankles in sea sponge, dripping with salt water, then covered his face with a thick black cloth.

At 7:26, the exhaust fan stopped humming, and David let out a loud exhale. When the curtain lowered and Hall’s death was declared, his brother sighed and said, ‘Now he’s free.’

https://wpln.org/post/lee-hall-executed-in-the-electric-chair-for-1991-murder-in-east-tennessee/