execution | My Crime Library

Earl Forrest Missouri Execution

Earl Forrest was executed by the State of Missouri for three murders. According to court documents Earl Forrest went over to the first two victims home demanding they buy a mobile home from him. When an argument broke out Earl Forrest would shoot and kill Harriet “Tottie” Smith and Michael Wells. When police attempted to arrest him Earl Forrest would shoot and kill Dent County Deputy JoAnn Barnes. Earl Forrest would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Earl Forrest would be executed by lethal injection on May 11 2016

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A man who killed two people in a drug dispute and a sheriff’s deputy in a subsequent shootout was put to death Wednesday in what could be Missouri’s last execution for some time.

Earl Forrest, 66, died by injection for the December 2002 deaths of Harriett Smith, Michael Wells and Dent County Sheriff’s Deputy Joann Barnes. He was pronounced dead at 7:18 p.m. CDT, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.

Forrest’s fate was sealed hours before his punishment when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt the execution and Democratic Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon turned down a clemency request

Court documents showed Forrest had been drinking when he went to Smith’s home in the southern Missouri town of Salem and demanded that she fulfill her promise to buy a lawn mower and mobile home for him in exchange for introducing her to a source for methamphetamine. Wells was visiting Smith at the time. An argument ensued, and Forrest shot Wells in the face. He shot Smith six times and took a lockbox full of meth valued at $25,000.

When police converged on Forrest’s home, he shot Barnes and Dent County Sheriff Bob Wofford, according to court documents. Earl Forrest was shot in the face in the exchange of gunfire. He then put some meth in his mouth, crawled to the door and yelled, “I surrender. We need help. People down.”

Forrest’s girlfriend, Angela Gamblin, also was shot in the burst of gunfire. She and Wofford survived, along with Forrest.

Missouri has been one of the most prolific states for executions in recent years, second only to Texas. With the execution of Forrest, the state has put 19 men to death since November 2013, including six inmates last year. Forrest was the first in 2016.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/missouri-man-executed-for-killing-deputy-2-others/

Daniel Lucas Georgia Execution

Daniel Lucas was executed by the State of Georgia for a triple murder. According to court documents Daniel Lucas and Brandon Rhode broke into the home and when they was surprised by the home owner they would shoot and kill 37-year-old Steven Moss, his 15-year-old daughter Kristin and his 11-year-old son Bryan. Daniel Lucas and Brandon Rhode would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Brandon Rhode was executed in 2010. Daniel Lucas would be executed in 2016

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A late April execution date has been set for man convicted in the 1998 triple murders of a central Georgia trucking company owner and his two children, authorities said Thursday.

Daniel Lucas is scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. on April 27 at the state prison in Jackson, said a statement from Commissioner Homer Bryson of the Department of Corrections. Georgia executes inmates using an injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital.

Lucas, 37, received the death sentence in 1999 for the killings of Steven Moss, 37, his 11-year-old son Bryan and 15-year-old daughter Kristin, who interrupted a burglary at their home near Macon in central Georgia.

Another man convicted in the murders, Brandon Joseph Rhode, was put to death in September 2010. His execution was delayed by about a week after Rhode tried to kill himself by slashing his arms and throat just hours before he was initially set to be executed.

Lucas and Rhode were searching the Moss home for valuables in April 1998 when Bryan Moss saw them through a front window, and entered through a back door armed with a baseball bat, prosecutors have said. They say the two then wrestled Bryan to a chair and Lucas shot him in the shoulder.

Lucas then led the boy to a bedroom and shot him multiple times, prosecutors have said.

Rhodes met Kristin as she got home from school and forced her to sit on a chair and shot her twice with a pistol, according to court records. Rhode then ambushed Steven Moss when he arrived home, shooting him four times with the same pistol. Lucas later shot the two children again to make sure they were dead, according to the records.

Moss’ wife, Gerri Ann, discovered the bodies when she returned home from work.

Several witnesses saw Rhode’s vehicle as the pair fled the house and one of them identified Lucas as the passenger, prosecutors have said. Damage to the vehicle’s front and rear bumpers matched damage to a propane tank and a cinder block at the Moss home.

Georgia has already executed three inmates this year and a fourth is scheduled to die Tuesday.A late April execution date has been set for man convicted in the 1998 triple murders of a central Georgia trucking company owner and his two children, authorities said Thursday.

Daniel Anthony Lucas is scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. on April 27 at the state prison in Jackson, said a statement from Commissioner Homer Bryson of the Department of Corrections. Georgia executes inmates using an injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital.

Lucas then led the boy to a bedroom and shot him multiple times, prosecutors have said.

Moss’ wife, Gerri Ann, discovered the bodies when she returned home from work.

Georgia has already executed three inmates this year and a fourth is scheduled to die Tuesday.

https://newschannel9.com/news/local/georgia-to-execute-man-convicted-in-triple-murder-this-month

Kenneth Fults Georgia Execution

Kenneth Fults was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of his neighbor during a robbery. According to court documents Kenneth Fults would break into his neighbors home and during the process would shoot and kill nineteen year old Cathy Bounds after smothering the woman with a pillow. Kenneth Fults would steal the victims car and fled the scene. Kenneth Fults would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Kenneth Fults would be executed by lethal injection on April 12, 2016

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A Georgia inmate convicted of the fatal shooting of a woman during a 1996 crime spree had his request for a stay of execution rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, hours before he received a lethal injection.

Attorneys for inmate Kenneth Fults had asked the nation’s highest court to consider arguments that a juror who imposed the sentence was motivated by racial bias. The request presented to Justice Clarence Thomas on behalf of the court had been denied, the court said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. It gave no explanation for the decision.

Fults was executed at 7:37 p.m. Tuesday at the state prison in Jackson, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

In a statement the department said Fults “accepted a final prayer and declined to make a final statement.”

The 47-year-old inmate had pleaded guilty to killing a neighbor, 19-year-old Cathy Bounds, during a burglary in January 1996, and a jury sentenced him to death

On Tuesday, Fults had visits with 17 relatives, a friend and an attorney and two paralegals, officials said.

On Monday, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to grant clemency for Fults. The parole board is the only entity in Georgia that can commute a death sentence.

Prosecutors have said Fults killed Bounds during a weeklong crime spree that began when he stole two guns during burglaries. After trying unsuccessfully to kill his former girlfriend’s new boyfriend with one of the stolen guns, Fults broke into the trailer next to his, where Bounds lived with her boyfriend.

Bounds, who was home alone, pleaded for her life and offered him the rings on her fingers, but Fults forced her into the bedroom, wrapped electrical tape around her head, put her face-down on the bed, put a pillow over her head and shot her five times in the back of the head, prosecutors said.

Fults’ lawyers said in a clemency petition that their client had an extremely tough childhood characterized by abuse and neglect and an intellectual disability that keeps him from behaving appropriately

“Mr. Fults, the man, committed a terrible, tragic act when he killed Cathy Bounds,” they wrote. “But before the man existed, there was an innocent, vulnerable child in his place. And that child, Kenny, fell through the cracks.”

They also pointed out what they said were flaws in his sentencing trial, including a juror they said was motivated by racial bias and a defense attorney who fell asleep and failed to provide jurors with adequate information.

In their filing with the Supreme Court, Fults’ lawyers argued his death sentence is unconstitutional because one of the jurors who imposed it was motivated by racial prejudice.

During jury selection for Fults’ trial in 1997, juror Thomas Buffington, who was white, told the judge and lawyers on both sides that he felt no racial prejudice.

An investigator working with Fults’ lawyers eight years later spoke to Buffington about his jury service. Buffington, who was 79 at the time of the interview and has since died, twice used a racial slur when talking about Kenneth Fults, who is black.

Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that’s what that (N-word) deserved,” Buffington said, according to the signed, April 12, 2005, affidavit in the court record.

State and federal courts have consistently declined to consider Fults’ argument that his sentence was unfairly imposed because of racial bias, mostly for procedural reasons that have to do with when the argument was first raised. The U.S. Supreme court in October declined to take up the issue on appeal.

As the scheduled execution loomed, Fults’ lawyers asked the high court to take the case directly, not as an appeal. They argued it was very similar to another case the court agreed last week to hear.

The state argued in a court filing Monday that this case did not demonstrate the “exceptional circumstances” necessary for the Supreme Court to take it on directly.

Fults was the fourth man executed in Georgia this year. Another man, Daniel Lucas, is scheduled to die April 27.

https://www.news4jax.com/news/2016/04/13/georgia-executes-man-who-killed-teen-neighbor-in-1996/

Pablo Vasquez Texas Execution

Pablo Vasquez was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a twelve year old boy. Pablo Vasquez would meet the victim, David Cardenas, at a party. After the party Pablo Vasquez and his cousin fifteen year old ndres Rafael “Andy” Chapa would follow the victim and strike him in the head with an iron bar. The twelve year old boy would be dragged across a four lane highway were he was brutalized, robbed, murdered and scalped. Pablo Vasquez would later tell the police that the devil told him to do it. Pablo Vasquez would be convicted and sentenced to death. Vasquez would be executed by lethal injection on April 6, 2016

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Twelve-year-old David Cardenas was still alive when his killer drank the blood from his wounds, according to a videotaped confession Pablo Lucio Vasquez later gave police. After Cardenas’ April 1998 murder, his body was mutilated and buried in a shallow grave in Donna, Texas.

Vasquez, who admitted slitting Cardenas’ throat and beating him to death before stealing a ring and chain from the body, was executed Wednesday for the crime. He was 38.

“I started hearing voices in my head, and I told my cousin that somebody was telling me to kill him,” Vasquez said in his confession.

After his final appeals were denied by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon, Vasquez was strapped to a gurney in the Huntsville Unit shortly after 6 p.m. He was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital and pronounced dead at 6:35 p.m.

In his final statement, he thanked his family and apologized to Cardenas’ family.

“This is the only way that I can be forgiven,” he said from the execution chamber. “You got your justice right here.”

In his last appeal, Vasquez claimed he wasn’t given a fair trial because the court “repeatedly excused prospective jurors with sympathies against the death penalty but still qualified to serve,” according to the petition originally filed with the state. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had already rejected his claim.

In previous unsuccessful appeals, Vasquez’s attorneys argued that the murder shouldn’t have been considered a capital crime because Vasquez didn’t kill Cardenas intending to rob him, according to court documents. They have also claimed that his trial counsel was ineffective for not using an insanity defense.

Sometime in the early morning of April 18, 1998, Cardenas, Vasquez, then 20, and Vasquez’s cousin, 15-year-old Andres Chapa, left a party together. Vasquez had been drinking, smoking marijuana and snorting cocaine, according to his confession

When they got to the house where Chapa’s mother was staying, Vasquez said he “blacked out” and started hearing voices telling him to kill Cardenas. He struck the boy several times in the back of the head with a pipe.

Pablo Vasquez then slit Cardenas’ throat while Chapa began to prepare a grave, Vasquez said.

“He was still saying something, and I picked him up in the air,” Vasquez said in his confession. “The blood was dripping and got it all over my face. So, I don’t know, I mean something just told me drink.”

Vasquez put Cardenas back down, and Chapa hit the boy in the face with a shovel five or six times, according to Vasqeuz’s statement.

The two dug a small hole, placed Cardenas in it, and covered him with grass and pieces of wood.

When police found Cardenas’ body on April 22, he was scalped and missing a foot, arm and part of his other arm. Skin had been cut from his back, court documents stated.

Pablo Vasquez confessed to the murder after his arrest and was indicted on capital murder charges for the boy’s death and the theft of his jewelry. He was convicted and sentenced to death in March 1999 in Hidalgo County, just over 17 years ago.

Chapa was also convicted but received a 35-year-sentence because he was a minor. He first became eligible for parole last year but was denied in December. His next shot at parole is in 2020, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/04/06/killer-faces-execution-boys-death/

Joshua Bishop Georgia Execution

Joshua Bishop was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of a man during a robbery. According to court documents Joshua Bishop and Mark Braxley would murder Leverett Morrison because they wanted his Jeep. After Joshua Bishop was arrested he would confess to the murder of Ricky Lee Willis. Joshua Bishop would be sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection on March 31, 2016

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Georgia has executed Joshua Daniel Bishop for the 1994 Baldwin County murder of Leverett Morrison, the office of the Georgia attorney general announced Thursday.

Bishop, 41, was put to death by lethal injection at 9:27 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center in Butts County. The sentence was carried out shortly after the United States Supreme Court denied Bishop’s request for a stay of execution.

A possible reprieve from the nation’s highest court was all Bishop had left after the Georgia Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon declined to halt his execution. The State Board of Pardons and Paroles also denied his plea for clemency Thursday.

The original execution hour of 7 p.m. came and went, as is the norm in death penalty cases.

During his final evening of life, Bishop ate all of his last meal: a barbecue sandwich, Brunswick stew, potato chips, coleslaw, lemonade and purple candy. He also received 13 visitors — a mixture of friends, clergy and legal reps — and recorded a final statement.

Bishop is the third man Georgia has executed this year. There is another lethal injection scheduled for April 12 — Kenneth Fults for murdering his neighbor in 1996.

Bishop was 19 when he and 36-year-old Mark Braxley murdered Morrison because they wanted the keys to his Jeep.

The three men had spent much of June 25, 1994, drinking at a local bar before they moved their party to Braxley’s trailer where they smoked crack.

Morrison, 35, was asleep but woke up when Bishop tried to fish his keys out of his pocket. Bishop and Braxley hit Morrison with a car battery and then beat him with a curtain rod until he was dead. They left his body between two dumpsters, set fire to his Jeep, and returned to Braxley’s trailer to clean the murder scene.

Then they went back to the bar to drink.

While Bishop confessed to killing Morrison — as well as a second murder investigators did not yet know about — he still went to trial and was ultimately sentenced to die. Braxley, however, pleaded guilty and is serving a sentence of life with parole.

The two were never tried on charges of killing Ricky Lee Wills on June 9, 1994, but evidence of Wills’ murder was used to secure a death sentence for Bishop. Bishop and Braxley said they killed Wills because he he’d had sexual contact with Bishop’s mother, who was a prostitute and drug and alcohol addict.

https://www.ajc.com/news/local/georgia-executes-joshua-bishop-for-1994-murder/cMjL3hrLCd0XaCk9AEUI3K/