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Justen Hall Texas Execution

Justen Hall was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a woman in 2002. According to court documents Justen Hall was a captain of a white national group who would strangle to death Melanie Billhartz. Justen Hall would be executed by lethal injection on November 6, 2019.

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Texas executed a 38-year-old man Wednesday night for the 2002 slaying of a woman in El Paso.

Justen Hall was the eighth person executed in Texas in 2019. Just after 6 p.m., he was strapped to a gurney in the Huntsville execution chamber. Hall, identified in court documents as a district captain of a white nationalist gang, was convicted in the strangling of Melanie Billhartz in El Paso.

Billhartz’s cousin, Cameron Rountree,along with Hall’s mother and half-sister, watched from the viewing room as Hall was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 6:13 p.m. He was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m.

In his final statement, Hall said he wanted to address Billhartz’s relatives and “apologize for the pain and suffering” he caused.

“And to my mom and Morelia, I love you and I’m going to miss you all,” he said. “I’m ready.”

Hall killed Billhartz while out on bond from a previous murder charge, according to media reports. Newspaper articles identified that previous murder victim as Arlene Diaz. During a 2017 court hearing, Hall admitted killing Diaz.

“And to the Diaz family that I had to put you through this, it should have never happened,” Hall said shortly before his death Wednesday, according to prison officials.

Hall’s lawyers filed a motion last month asking an El Paso court to push back Hall’s execution date until experts can evaluate his competency. The motion stated Hall refused contact with counsel for at least two years and argued that his behavior signaled a drastic decline in his already troubled mental state.

Hall stated he was competent to represent himself — and two doctors agreed in 2017. He asked courts to waive his appeals and schedule an execution date.

“I do not like the person I have become, and I need to be put down like the rabid dog that I am,” he wrote to a trial judge on Oct. 6, 2016.

But Hall’s attorneys have questioned his competency, pointing to a history of delusion, paranoia and suicidal behavior. In January, a court ruled against reconsidering Hall’s competency.

“Mr. Hall’s campaign to drop all appeals and cut off all communication with his counsel for the past two and a half years further confirms that he is being driven by his paranoid delusions to seek to use the State’s power to facilitate his own self-destruction,” the attorneys wrote in their motion to an El Paso district court.

El Paso District Attorney Jaime Esparza said in a statement that Hall has confessed to two murders and “demonstrated that, if given the opportunity, he will commit acts of violence that constitute a continuing threat to society.”

On Oct. 28, 2002, Billhartz and Ted Murgatroyd, an alleged gang prospect, got into an argument near a drug house, according to court documents. After Billhartz threatened to call the police — drawing authorities to the gang’s meth lab — she disappeared with Hall in her truck. Murgatroyd said Hall came back hours later with Billhartz’s body in the back of the cab, according to court records. Hall told Murgatroyd to get a shovel and machete to bury Billhartz. The two drove to New Mexico, where Hall told Murgatroyd to cut off the victim’s fingers to prevent DNA from being found before dumping Billhartz’s body, records state.

Weeks later, Murgatroyd led investigators to the body. Hall, then 21, was arrested later that day and confessed to the killing on Nov. 25, 2002.

He was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2005.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/11/06/texas-death-row-inmate-justen-hall-execution-scheduled/

Charles Rhines South Dakota Execution

Charles Rhines was executed by the South Dakota government for a robbery murder committed in 1992. According to court documents Charles Rhines would go to his former place of work and during the commission of a robbery would stab to death Donnivan Schaefer. Charles Rhines would be executed on November 4, 2019

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A convicted killer who fatally stabbed a former co-worker during a 1992 burglary used his last words Monday to speak directly to the parents of his victim, saying he forgave them “for your anger and hatred towards me.” But the victim’s parents refused to acknowledge the man who killed their son, instead focusing on the young man whom they called a blessing.

Charles Rhines was executed by lethal injection at 7:39 p.m., after the U.S. Supreme Court denied to halt his execution despite three late appeals.

“Ed and Peggy Schaeffer, I forgive you for your anger and hatred toward me,” Rhines said, before thanking his defense team. “I pray to God that he forgives you for your anger and hatred toward me. Thanks to my team. I love you all, goodbye. Let’s go. That’s all I have to say. Goodbye.”

Rhines, 63, ambushed 22-year-old Donnivan Schaefer in 1992 when Schaefer surprised him while he was burglarizing a Rapid City doughnut shop where Schaeffer worked. Rhines had been fired a few weeks earlier.

Rhines ambushed him, stabbing him in the stomach. Bleeding from his wound, Schaeffer begged to be taken to a hospital, vowing to keep silent about the crime; instead, he was forced into a storeroom, tied up and stabbed to death.

Steve Allender, a Rapid City police detective at the time of the killing who is now the city’s mayor, said Rhines’ jury sentenced him to death partly because of Rhines’ “chilling laughter” as he described Schaeffer’s death spasms.

“I watched the jury as they listened to the confession of Charles Rhines on audiotape and their reaction to his confession was appropriate. Any human being would be repulsed by the things he said and the way he said them,” Allender told KELO.

The Schaeffers made clear they didn’t want to talk about Rhines. Patty Schaeffer appeared before reporters holding a photo of her two sons, including Donnivan, as children, and then displayed a graduation photo of him.

“We were so blessed to have this young man in our family and in our life,” she said. “Today is the day that we talk about Donavan, the guy who loved his family, his fiancé, and his friends.”

Media witnesses to the execution said Rhines appeared calm, and it took only about a minute for the pentobarbital used by the state to take effect. They said when he finished speaking, he closed his eyes, then blinked, breathed heavily and died.

Rhines had challenged the state’s use of pentobarbital, arguing it wasn’t the ultra-fast-acting drug he was entitled to. A circuit judge ruled it was as fast or faster than other drugs when used in lethal doses and speculated that Rhines wanted only to delay his execution.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected that appeal, as well as his arguments that he was sentenced to die by a jury with an anti-gay bias and that he wasn’t given access to experts who could have examined him for cognitive and psychiatric impairments.

Pentobarbital was used last year when South Dakota executed Rodney Berget, who killed a prison guard during a 2011 escape attempt. Berget was pronounced dead 12 minutes after the lethal injection began, and a transcript released afterward said Berget asked after the injection was administered: “Is it supposed to feel like that?” His comment prompted a national group that studies capital punishment to call on the state to release more details about the drug used.

After attending Schaeffer’s funeral, Rhines moved to Seattle. Authorities thought the move was odd because Rhines had vowed to never return to Washington state, where he had spent time in prison. Allender said authorities initially interviewed Rhines and felt something was off, but Rhines wasn’t arrested until four months later, after Rhines told his former roommate about the killing.

Rhines wrote to the Argus Leader in May 2013, saying that when he saw a grieving mother on the news in an unrelated case, he realized what he had done to Schaeffer’s mother.

“Just at the cusp of her beloved child becoming an independent person, a responsible adult with a family and friends surrounding him and his mother waiting expectantly for grandchildren to spoil, having all that snatched away for almost no reason at all and the hole it has had to have left in her heart,” he wrote. “Prosecutors talk of closure, but that wound will never close, no matter how long it is there.”

Peggy Schaeffer, Donnivan’s mother, rejected the words as insincere.

Schaeffer’s family declined to speak with The Associated Press in advance of Rhines’ execution. In June, when a judge scheduled the execution, Peggy Schaeffer told reporters, “This step was one big one for justice for Donnivan. It’s just time.”

In the afternoon, about 30 protesters gathered in snow flurries outside the state prison where Rhines was to be executed, praying and singing hymns. Denny Davis, director of South Dakotans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said they accept Rhines’ execution but hope to steer public opinion against capital punishment.

“It is about a culture shift and changing the values of people,” he said. “Why would we want to put this person to death when society is already safe?”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-dakota-execution-today-charles-rhines-executed-for-fatally-stabbing-co-worker-2019-11-04/

Russell Bucklew Missouri Execution

Russell Bucklew was executed by the State of Missouri for a murder committed in 1996. According to court documents Russell Bucklew would shoot and kill Michael Sanders who he believed was dating his ex girlfriend Stephanie Ray Pruett. Russell Bucklew would attempt to shoot Pruett son before he kidnapped and sexually assaulted Stephanie. Russell Bucklew would be executed by lethal injection on October 2, 2019

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Missouri executed Russell Bucklew on Tuesday evening despite concerns from his attorneys that he did not receive an adequate defense and that his rare lifelong disease would lead to a bloody and gruesome death.

Bucklew was declared dead at 6:23 p.m. Central time and showed no obvious signs of distress, according to the Associated Press. As Bucklew lay strapped on the gurney before the lethal drug was injected, he “twitched his feet” and looked around. Shortly after the injection, he took a deep breath and ceased movement, the AP reported.

In a Wednesday phone call with The Appeal, Bucklew’s attorney, Cheryl Pilate, said that the Missouri Department of Corrections took several steps to avoid a botched execution, including sedating him beforehand with Valium and elevating the gurney to ensure he would not choke on his own blood should a tumor caused by his illness burst. The state uses a single dose of pentobarbital in its executions and has refused to reveal its supplier. Witnesses did not observe the insertion of the IV, Pilate said.

“The reality is they’re completely strapped down, their extremities are completely covered up, which is not a transparent process,” said Pilate. “We truly don’t know what he experienced.”

Jeremy Weis, another Bucklew attorney, told The Appeal that in the days before his death, prison officials did not administer Bucklew’s pain medication on time and stopped giving him Klonopin, an anti-anxiety medication that he had been taking for years.

Pilate said she and Bucklew’s other attorneys were on the phone with Bucklew about an hour before the execution. Before they could say goodbye, they were cut off mid-sentence. “The line went dead. This is deliberate,” she told The Appeal. “The cruelty is the point.”

A Missouri Department of Corrections spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment from The Appeal.

In September, Bucklew’s attorneys asked Governor Mike Parson to spare his life and commute his sentence to life without parole. On Tuesday morning, Parson’s spokesperson, Kelli Jones, said in a statement that his request had been denied. She did not return a request for comment from The Appeal asking to explain Parson’s reasons for the denial.

Bucklew was the 89th prisoner Missouri executed since 1976, when executions resumed after a Supreme Court ruling, and the first since Parson became governor.

Bucklew was convicted of murdering Michael Sanders in 1996 and sentenced to death the following year. The killing was capital because Bucklew had raped his ex-girlfriend, Stephanie Ray, during the commission of the crime.

It would be more than two decades before Bucklew’s defense team would conduct an investigation into his background, a constitutional obligation in death penalty cases. Their failure to do so during his trial, his current attorneys have argued, meant that the jury, when deciding Bucklew’s fate, never considered the abuse and addiction he suffered early in his life.

In 2018, Bucklew’s attorneys discovered that at the time of his crime, he was addicted to opiates he had been prescribed for his disease. The medications, they learned, also sent him into a rage. The opiates were used to treat cavernous hemangioma, a rare condition that caused blood-filled tumors to form. For years, Bucklew’s legal team argued that executing Bucklew by lethal injection would cause the tumors to burst and he would suffocate on his own blood, amounting to torture. Bucklew’s execution had been stopped twice before over this issue.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Bucklew’s execution could proceed, despite the risks. In his majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a painless execution.

“This is the first time in this country that a person has been executed when consensus was clear that it could be torture,” the ACLU wrote in a press release on Tuesday night. International leaders from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had condemned Missouri’s attempts to execute Bucklew on those same grounds.

Former Cape Girardeau County Prosecutor Morley Swingle, who prosecuted Bucklew in 1997, was present at the execution. Afterwards, he boasted that Energizer contacted him asking him to stop using “homicidal Energizer bunny” in reference to Bucklew, a Missouri Net reporter tweeted.

Leading up to the execution, Bucklew told The Appeal in a statement through his attorneys that he had been “feeling emotional but nothing over the top.” He wrote that he hoped Parson would let him live because he was remorseful for his crime and had changed during his incarceration. Notably, he said, he had been taken off the medications that caused him to become angry.

“I want people to know that they should live your life with honor, always keep your word, respect your elders and think before you act,” he said. “These are the things I have learned in life.”

https://theappeal.org/missouri-executes-russell-bucklew-threat-botched-execution/

Robert Sparks Texas Execution

Robert Sparks was executed by the State of Texas for a triple murder. According to court documents Robert Sparks would stab his wife to death as he believed that she was poisoning him. Robert Sparks would then stab to death his two stepsons ages ten and nine before tying up and sexually assaulting his two stepdaughters. Robert Sparks would be executed by lethal injection on September 26, 2019

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A Texas inmate who claimed he was intellectually disabled was executed Wednesday for fatally stabbing his two stepsons during a 2007 attack in which his wife also died.

Robert Sparks received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the slayings of 9-year-old Harold Sublet and 10-year-old Raekwon Agnew in their Dallas home. Sparks, 45, became the 16th inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the seventh in Texas.

“I am sorry for the hard times. And what hurts me is that I hurt y’all … even y’all, too,” Sparks told his relatives and friends who watched through a death chamber window, turning his head at one point to address family members of his victims who stood behind a separate window.

As the lethal dose of pentobarbital began, he said, “I love you all” and then added, “I feel it.”

He took two deep breaths almost immediately, snored three times and then all movement ceased. He was pronounced dead 23 minutes later, at 6:39 p.m. CDT.

Seven more executions are scheduled this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state.

Prosecutors said the attack in September 2007 began when Sparks stabbed his wife, 30-year-old Chare Agnew, 18 times as she lay in her bed. Sparks then went into the boys’ bedroom and separately took them into the kitchen, where he stabbed them. Raekwon was stabbed at least 45 times.

Sparks then raped his 12- and 14-year-old stepdaughters, authorities said.

“The day when the situation was going on, he said that we wouldn’t make it,” one of the stepdaughters, Lakenya Agnew, said after witnessing Sparks’ execution. “Twelve years later, we’re both standing here. … I want him to know we’re not suffering. We’re hurt emotionally but physically we’re fine.”

She added that Sparks being put to death “kills the nightmare.”

The Associated Press usually doesn’t name victims of sexual assault, but Agnew spoke publicly and identified herself.

On Wednesday with the execution time approaching, the U.S. Supreme Court declined a request by Sparks’ attorneys to stop the lethal injection. They had alleged his trial jury was improperly influenced because a bailiff wore a tie with an image of a syringe that showed his support for the death penalty. In the ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that while she didn’t disagree with the denial, she found the bailiff’s actions “deeply troubling.”

Sparks also had alleged a prosecution witness at his trial provided false testimony regarding his prison classification if a jury chose life without parole rather than a death sentence.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday declined to stop the execution on claims he was intellectually disabled, saying his attorneys had not presented sufficient evidence to show Sparks was mentally disabled and his attorneys had failed to raise such a claim in a timely manner.

In August, the 5th Circuit did grant a stay for Dexter Johnson, another Texas death row inmate who also claims he is intellectually disabled. In that case, the appeals court ruled Johnson had made a sufficient showing of possible intellectual disability that needed further review.

“My co-counsel and I may have lost this battle, but we remain undeterred soldiers in the enduring war for capital conviction integrity,” said Seth Kretzer, one of Sparks’ appellate attorneys.

After being arrested, Sparks told police he fatally stabbed his wife and stepsons because he believed they were trying to poison him. Sparks told a psychologist that a voice told him “to kill them because they were trying to kill me.”

Sparks’ lawyers had argued he suffered from severe mental illness and had been diagnosed as a delusional psychotic and with schizoaffective disorder, a condition characterized by hallucinations.

A psychologist hired by Sparks’ attorneys said in an affidavit this month that Sparks “meets full criteria for a diagnosis of” intellectual disability.

The Supreme Court in 2002 barred 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.

Sparks’ attorneys said that at the time of his trial, he was not deemed intellectually disabled, but that changes since then in how Texas makes such determinations and updates to the handbook used by medical professionals to diagnose mental disorders would have changed that.

On whether Sparks’ jury was improperly influenced by the bailiff’s tie with an image of a syringe, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said the jury forewoman indicated she never saw the tie and had no knowledge of it affecting the jurors.

The attorney general’s office said the testimony from the prosecution witness on prison classification was corrected on cross-examination.

“Sparks committed a heinous crime which resulted in the murders of two young children. He is unable to overcome the overwhelming testimony” in his case, the attorney general’s office said in its court filing with the Supreme Court.

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2019/09/25/inmate-dallas-robert-sparks-executed-stabbing-deaths-stepsons/

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/