November 2021 | Page 8 of 19 | My Crime Library

Arturo Diaz Texas Execution

Arturo Diaz was executed by the State of Texas for a murder that took place in a robbery. According to court documents Arturo Diaz forced his way into a home where he tied up two people. Both victims would be shot with one dying from their injuries. Arturo Diaz would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Arturo Diaz would be executed by lethal injection on September 27 2013

Arturo Diaz More News

A South Texas man was put to death Thursday for a slaying 14 years ago in which the victim was bound with shoelaces and strips of bedding, stabbed 94 times and robbed of $50.

The execution of Arturo Diaz, 37, was carried out after the U.S. Supreme Court refused a last-ditch appeal to block his death by lethal injection. It was the 13th execution this year in Texas, the nation’s most active capital punishment state.

Diaz smiled and blew a kiss to several witnesses watching through a window, including his mother and grandmother.

He then turned to the father of his victim, watching through an adjacent window to the death chamber. “I hope this can bring some relief for you and your family,” he told him.

He spoke in Spanish to his own friends and relatives, telling them: “I am with God.”

He also added that he hoped his fate “serves as an example for some youngsters. … Think about it before you do drugs.”

He was pronounced dead 17 minutes later, at 6:30 p.m. CDT.

“It was way too easy,” Forrest Nichols, whose son was murdered in 1999, said as he stood watching Diaz.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials have used pentobarbital as the single execution drug for more than a year, but Diaz became the first in the state given the sedative procured from a vendor or manufacturer the prison agency has declined to identify.

Diaz’s reaction to the drug was similar to other Texas inmates who have been executed with pentobarbital. He took several deep breaths, began snoring and ceased movement in less than a minute.

The expiration date of the department’s existing inventory passed this month, possibly diluting its potency. Like other death penalty states, Texas officials needed to go to nontraditional sources because the usual suppliers bowed to pressure from capital punishment opponents and refused to make their product available.

In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Diaz’s attorney, James Terry Jr., argued recent high court rulings allowed another look at previously unsuccessful appeals where inmates had shoddy legal help. Diaz had deficient counsel at his 2000 trial in Hidalgo County and early in the appeals process, his attorney said.

Diaz, from Las Milpas, a small town between McAllen and the Mexican border, was convicted of the April 1999 slaying of Michael Nichols, 25, at Nichols’ apartment in McAllen. Diaz also was given two life terms for attempted capital murder and aggravated robbery of another man who survived.

Cregg Thompson, the lead prosecutor at Diaz’s murder trial, said evidence showed Diaz tried to steal Nichols’ pickup truck but couldn’t open a locked gate at the apartment complex. His shoe print was found on the keypad box at the gate, and his DNA was found on a beer bottle at Nichols’ apartment.

Diaz said he was high on drugs and alcohol during the attack on Nichols. He also confessed to a slaying that took place a month earlier. In that case, the victim’s head was stomped and face beaten with a hammer. Diaz also received a 94-year prison term for aggravated sexual assault for raping a jail inmate.

“You know it’s going to take some time for all the appeals and everything to go through,” Thompson said this week of Diaz’s execution. “But when you say 14 years, that sounds like an awful long time.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arturo-diaz-south-texas-man-executed-for-1999-slaying/

Harry Mitts Ohio Execution

Harry Mitts was executed by the State of Ohio for a double murder. According to court documents Harry Mitts would shoot and kill the first victim when he was walking across the parking lot. During the police search for the gunman Harry Mitts would fire several shots through the door striking and killing a police officer. Harry Mitts would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Harry Mitts would be executed by lethal injection on September 25, 2013

Harry Mitts More News

Garfield Heights killer Harry Mitts Jr. was executed Wednesday after spending nearly two decades on death row for gunning down his neighbor and a police officer.

A lethal injection stopped Mitts’ heart at 10:39 a.m.

Mitts, 61, was sentenced to death in November 1994 after a full-bore firefight at his apartment complex that left neighbor John Bryant and Garfield Heights Police Sgt. Dennis Glivar dead.

Harry Mitts used his last words to ask for forgiveness and encourage the victims’ families to find salvation in Jesus Christ.

“I’m so sorry for taking your loved ones’ lives,” Mitts said with tears in his eyes. “I had no business doing what I did and I’ve been carrying that burden with me for 19 years.

“Please don’t carry that hatred for me with you in your hearts.”

Mitts’ lethal injection lasted nearly 35 minutes.

At 10:05 a.m., corrections officers walked a calm Mitts into the death chamber, where he was strapped to a steel bed and hooked up to lines that would deliver deadly chemicals.

After his final words, Mitts stared at the ceiling while authorities in another room delivered the injection.

Harry Mitts closed his eyes and took increasingly labored breaths. About a minute later, he began to snore.

The snoring soon stopped and Mitts’ breathing gradually slowed. His face turned blue by the time he took his last peaceful gasp.

Harry Mitts is the last person to be put to death in Ohio using the drug pentobarbital. The state’s supply of pentobarbital was expected to run out with Mitts’ executions today. Department of Rehabilitation and Correction will announce by Oct. 4 how it will respond, according to spokeswoman Ricky Seyfang

“I know its wrong, but I still have hatred for him,” said Bryant’s sister Johnnal after the execution.

Glivar’s widow Debbie said she would never forgive Mitts.

Mitts’ friend Gary Hopkins joined ministers Edward Jenkins and Lucian Piaskowiak on the inmate’s side of the witness room.

All of the witnesses watched in silence as Mitts slipped away.

Harry Mitts began his hours-long rampage on the evening of Aug. 14, 1994 by firing a laser-sighted round into Bryant’s chest as Bryant and his girlfriend were returning home from grocery shopping.

Bryant, who was black, and his girlfriend, who was white, were walking from the parking lot to their apartment when Mitts approached the couple.

He raised his gun, uttered racial slurs and shot 28-year-old Bryant point blank. Against Mitts’ orders, neighbors carried Bryant to a second-floor apartment and waited for help to arrive.

Harry Mitts then walked away, randomly firing his weapon, and prepared for the imminent police response. Mitts hoped for a suicide by cop, according to Ohio Parole Board documents.

Harry Mitts fired eight to 10 rounds at the first patrol car to approach the complex and then fled to his first-floor apartment.

Glivar and Kaiser arrived soon after and located Bryant, who bled out before they arrived. The officers returned downstairs to ensure the building was safe for paramedics to enter.

That is when Mitts, who clenched a .44 Magnum in one fist and a 9 mm pistol in the other, sprung open his apartment door and let loose a volley of gunfire.

Glivar, 44, was shot seven times. Bullets ripped through his heart, lung, liver, kidney and stomach. He collapsed near the door, dropped his shotgun and died within minutes.

Kaiser was shot in the chest and hand but managed to force Mitts to retreat by firing in the killer’s direction. Kaiser then took cover upstairs and kept watch on Mitts’ apartment.

“We didn’t even know he lived there,” Kaiser said Tuesday. “He was just waiting for us. Maybe he was looking through his peephole. He took us by surprise.”

Kaiser tried to talk Mitts into surrendering. Mitts refused.

“The only way we’re going to end this is if you kill me,” Mitts shouted, according to clemency documents. “You have to come down. You have to do your job and you have to kill me.”

Minutes later, Maple Heights Police Officer John Mackey arrived at the complex and helped Kaiser rescue tenants upstairs by guiding them down a ladder propped against a back window.

Mackey and Kaiser then took positions outside Mitts apartment while the gunman fired sporadic shots using Glivar’s dropped shotgun and weapons from his home arsenal.

At one point, Mitts was able to pick out Mackey’s location by the sound of the officer’s voice carrying through the hallway.

Harry Mitts fired through a wall and hit Mackey.

The bloody gun battle ended hours later when a SWAT team shot tear gas into Mitts’ apartment and subdued the wounded triggerman.

Mitts was charged with the aggravated murders of Bryant and Glivar, and the attempted murders of Kaiser and Mackey.

Three months later, the man with no previous criminal record was sentenced to death.

Authorities found thousands of rounds of ammunition in Mitts’ home and a bumper sticker that read: “Gun control means hitting what you aim at.”

The Ohio Parole Board said Mitts’ deadly confrontation is “clearly among the worst of the worst capital cases.”

Mitts began to tailspin in the weeks leading to the massacre. He began stalking his ex wife and her new husband, and admitted he thought about assassinating the man

Prosecutors argued Mitts’ attack was racially motivated, but defense attorneys contended Mitts killed Bryant only to lure police.

Last week, Gov. John Kasich denied Mitts clemency, siding with the parole board’s unanimous recommendation to carry out the death sentence.

Mitts told the parole board in August he found God while incarcerated at the Cuyahoga County Jail and looked forward to living “in perpetuity with Jesus Christ” after his execution

https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2013/09/harry_mitts_jr_executed.html

Robert Garza Texas Execution

Robert Garza was executed by the State of Texas for four murders. According to court documents Robert Garza was a gang member with the Tri-City Bombers when he took part in an ambush that would leave four women dead. Robert Garza was also suspected but not charged in another gang ambush that left six people dead. Robert Garza would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Robert Garza was executed by lethal injection on September 18, 2013

Robert Garza More News

A former South Texas street gang member was executed Thursday evening for his involvement in the killing of four women in a gang ambush 11 years ago.

Robert Gene Garza, 30, became the 12th condemned inmate executed this year in Texas, which carries out capital punishment more than any other state.

Garza smiled and blew a kiss to friends and relatives as they entered the death chamber. In a brief final statement, he thanked them for coming and told them he loved them.

“I know it’s hard for you,” he said. “It’s not easy. This is a release. Y’all finally get to move on with your lives.”

He took several deep breaths as a lethal dose of pentobarbital began flowing into his arms, then began snoring. All movement stopped within less than a minute. He was pronounced dead 26 minutes later, at 8:41 p.m. CDT.

A member of a Rio Grande Valley gang known as the Tri-City Bombers even before he was a teenager, Garza insisted a statement to police acknowledging his participation in the September 2002 shootings in Hidalgo County was made under duress and improperly obtained.

But prosecutors said Garza orchestrated the gang’s plan to silence the women, who Garza thought had witnessed another gang crime, and was present when several gang members opened fire on the women when they arrived at their trailer park home after work at a bar.

“I really didn’t have anything to do with the scenario the state was providing,” Garza told The Associated Press recently from death row. “I guess since we are gang members, they got me involved through the gang.

“I think they were just trying to close his case … and they needed somebody.”

Evidence later would show the women were killed by mistake. The gang member in the other crime never went to trial because he accepted a plea deal and prison term.

Garza, who was arrested in late January 2003, was convicted under Texas’ law of parties, which makes a non-triggerman equally culpable. Evidence showed Garza was a gang leader, told his companions how to do the killings, was present when the shootings took place and “in all likelihood was a shooter but is downplaying his part,” Joseph Orendain, the Hidalgo County assistant district attorney who prosecuted him, said this week.

In February, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case. His lawyer, Don Vernay, said appeals were exhausted.

Garza filed his own last-day appeals Thursday to the high court, delaying his punishment by some two hours until the justices ruled.

In his appeals, he argued his trial attorneys failed to obtain from his mother testimony jurors should have been allowed to hear that he stayed in the gang because he feared retaliation if he quit. He also contended his trial court judge earlier this week improperly refused his request to withdraw his execution date.

Garza argued the state should assure him the lethal dose of pentobarbital to be used in his punishment was chemically effective and obtained legally. Texas prison officials have said their inventory of pentobarbital is expiring this month.

Texas prison officials said earlier Thursday they will continue to use the same drug but wouldn’t say how the state will replace its supply.

“We have not changed our current execution protocol and have no immediate plans to do so,” Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Garza also was charged but never tried for participating in what became known in the Rio Grande Valley as the Edinburg massacre, the January 2003 slayings of six people at a home in the city.

In the case that sent him to death row, Garza was convicted of two counts of capital murder for the slayings of the four women. Evidence showed they were living in the U.S. without legal permission just outside Donna, about 15 miles southeast of McAllen.

In his statement to investigators, which Garza insisted was coerced, he said he carried out the “hit” with three other gunmen in two vehicles who opened fire on six women in their parked car.

Killed were Maria De La Luz Bazaldua Cobbarubias, Dantizene Lizeth Vasquez Beltran, Celina Linares Sanchez and Lourdes Yesenia Araujo Torres. Two others survived.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-gene-garza-texas-man-executed-for-gang-ambush-that-killed-4-women/

Anthony Banks Oklahoma Execution

Anthony Banks was executed by the State of Oklahoma for a sexual assault and murder. According to court documents Anthony Banks would kidnap Sun Travis who would later be sexually assaulted and murdered. Anthony Banks who was in prison at the time would be tied to the murder of Sun Travis by DNA. Anthony Banks would be convicted and sentenced to death. Anthony Banks would be executed by lethal injection on September 10 2013

Anthony Banks More News

Oklahoma executed a man on Tuesday for the rape and murder of a Tulsa woman in 1979, a crime that went unsolved for 18 years until new DNA techniques led to his conviction.

Anthony Banks, 60, was pronounced dead at 6:07 p.m. (2307 GMT). Banks was convicted and sentenced to death for the June 6, 1979, murder of Sun I. Kim Travis, a 24-year-old Korean woman who he had raped, beaten, shot in the face and dumped in a ditch, according to court documents.

“God bless you, I love you and I will see you again,” Banks said before he died of lethal injection, according to Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie.

Banks had three apple-filled rolls and two bottles of water as his last meal, Massie said.

His prior death sentence for the killing of a convenience store clerk was overturned on appeal and converted to life with possible parole in a plea deal. But his bid to appeal his death sentence in the killing of Travis failed, and he had been on death row since November 14, 1999.

The crime was unsolved for almost two decades until the Tulsa Police Department used new DNA investigative techniques to tie Banks to the crime, court documents said.

With DNA evidence found on the victim’s body and clothes, police were able to charge Banks and co-defendant Allen Wayne Nelson with Travis’ murder in 1997.

Banks was the fourth person put to death in Oklahoma this year and the 24th in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks capital punishment statistics.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-execution-oklahoma-idUKBRE9891J420130911

John Ferguson Florida Death Row

John Ferguson was executed by the State of Florida for eight murders. According to court documents John Ferguson and two accomplices: Marvin Francois and Beauford White would pull off a home invasion that would leave six people dead. A year later John Ferguson would shoot and kill two teenagers during another robbery. John Ferguson would be convicted and sentenced to death. John Ferguson would be executed on August 5, 2013 by lethal injection

John Ferguson More News

A man convicted of murdering eight people in the late 1970s was executed Monday night at the Florida State Prison, despite his lawyers’ pleas that he was too mentally ill to be put to death.

John Errol Ferguson, 65, died at 6:17 p.m., following a lethal injection.

The execution came less than two hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a final request for a stay.

Before the execution, Ferguson made a brief but unintelligible statement before 25 witnesses. At about three minutes into the procedure, he moved his head, strained his neck, moved his feet, put his head back down and closed his eyes.

The entire execution took 16 minutes.

About three dozen people protested across the street from the prison.

Ferguson and two others were convicted of murdering six people in 1977 during a robbery at in Miami-Dade County house used by marijuana dealers. Ferguson dressed as a utility worker to gain access and let his accomplices inside. Most of the victims were friends who happened to drop by the house while Ferguson and the other men were there. The victims were blindfolded and bound, and the encounter turned violent after a mask fell off one of Ferguson’s gang members and his face was spotted by a victim.

The decision was made to kill all eight people in the house. Two survived. At the time, it was the worst mass slaying ever in Miami-Dade County.

Ferguson also was convicted of the 1978 murder of a 17-year-old couple, Brian Glenfeldt and Belinda Worley. They were shot as Ferguson, dressed as a police officer, tried to rob them while they were parked at a lovers’ lane. Worley was raped.

The randomness of the crime and the youth of the two victims stunned many in Miami. Ferguson confessed to killing “the two kids” after he was arrested in April 1978 for the earlier killings, court records show.

Worley’s mother, Edna Worley, waited for decades for Ferguson’s execution but died last year.

Ferguson was sentenced to die in both cases; he unsuccessfully used the insanity defense in the trial over the teenagers’ murders.

The issue of Ferguson’s mental stability was a current that ran through his life, and his execution came after months of court appeals. Ferguson’s lawyers said their client had a long history of mental illness. The attorneys appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying that Ferguson lacked “rational understanding” that he will be executed and that killing him would “cruel and unusual punishment,” violating the Constitution.

Christopher Handman, Ferguson’s lead attorney, said his client’s mental illness manifested itself long before the slayings. Ferguson’s alcoholic father died when Ferguson was 13, and that’s when he started experiencing hallucinations, family members told the attorney. Ferguson also experienced abuse by his mother’s boyfriends, then was abandoned by his mom and raised by his sisters in a vermin-infested shack in Miami-Dade County.

When he was 21, he was shot in the head by a police officer in Miami. For several years in the 1970s, Ferguson was in a state mental hospital and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia; he was twice found not guilty of crimes by reason of insanity. Handman said one doctor wrote that Ferguson should not be released because he was a danger to himself and to society

But later, committed the murders in the house used he was released and, months by marijuana leaders.

Christopher Handman, an attorney for Ferguson, said Monday in a statement that he was disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision, denying his client a stay of execution.

“Mr. Ferguson is insane and incompetent for execution by any measure,” Handman said. “He has a fixed delusion that he is the ‘Prince of God’ who cannot be killed and will rise up after his execution to fight alongside Jesus and save America from a communist plot. He has no rational understanding of the reason for his execution or the effect the death penalty will have upon him.”

Earlier in the day, Ferguson chose to eat the same food other prisoners were being served as his final meal: A meat and vegetable patty, white bread, stewed tomatoes, potato salad, carrots and iced tea.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/05/convicted-mass-murderer-executed-in-florida/2621285/