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Jesse de la Rosa Texas Execution

Jesse De La Rosa was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of store clerk during a robbery. According to court documents Jesse De La Rose would fatally shoot Masaoud Ghazali during a robbery. Jesse De La Rosa would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Jesse De La Rosa would be executed by lethal injection on May 15 1985

Jesse De La Rosa More News

Jesse de la Rosa, telling his stepmother he loved her and asking forgiveness for his sins, was executed by lethal injection early today for killing a convenience store clerk for six cans of beer in 1979.

Mr. de la Rosa, 24 years old, was pronounced dead at 12:17 A.M., four minutes after injections in both arms. He was the 11th person executed in this country this year and the 43d put to death since the Supreme Court reinstituted capital punishment in 1976.

Mr. de la Rosa was executed for the slaying of Masaoud Ghazali, a former Iranian Air Force captain who was shot twice in the head in a robbery of a San Antonio 7-Eleven store.

He made his final statement staring at the ceiling, telling his stepmother, Carmen, who was in the death chamber, ”I love you.’

”God forgive my brothers and sisters for sins I have committed,” Mr. de la Rosa said in Spanish.

They Both Speak to Him

Mr. de la Rosa’s stepmother, who was accompanied by the condemned man’s father, Luciano, replied in English, ”You’ll never die because you’ll always be in my memories.”

His father added, in Spanish, ”God forgive my son.”

Mr. de la Rosa then added, ”God, I give my life for my brothers and sisters.”

When he gasped and buckled, his stepmother began sobbing. She was comforted by his father, who was also in tears. The couple left the prison without further comment.

The execution, the third carried out this year by the Texas Department of Corrections, came after two days of unsuccessful appeals. Late Tuesday the Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 to deny him new hearings. Then Gov. Mark White, as he in previous death sentences, refused to grant a 30-day reprieve.

He Receives Communion

After a steak dinner, Jesse de la Rosa spoke by telephone for 20 minutes to a longtime friend, Margie Garcia of San Antonio, and shortly after 8 P.M. he received communion from a prison priest, the Rev. Stephen Walsh.

It was the second death date for Mr. de la Rosa, who said in an interview a week ago that he had been coerced into confessing the slaying. He refused, however, to identify another killer.

A store clerk shot earlier the same night in a $40 robbery identified Mr. de la Rosa, who was 18 at the time. Mr. de la Rosa has said he had been drinking and smoking marijuana that night but was at a friend’s house when Mr. Ghazali was walked to the back of the store to a cooler and was shot twice in the head.

Asked if the execution relieved her, Mr. Ghazali’s wife, Gloria, replied, ”It does,” then hung up the telephone.

A second man involved in the crime spree, Alejandro Alcorta Garcia, 28, is serving a life sentence for aggravated robbery

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/16/us/prisoner-in-texas-dies-for-murder.html

John Young Georgia Execution

John Young was executed by the State of Georgia for a triple murder. According to court documents John Young would break into the home of the victims and would beat to death three elderly people Coleman Brice, Gladys Brice, and Katie Davis. John Young would also attack three others in the home. John Young would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. John Young would be executed by way of electric chair on March 20 1985

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The sister of triple murderer John C. Young, who died early Wednesday in Georgia’s electric chair, said he faced his execution calmly and his only concern was for the welfare of his brothers and sisters.

Katie Young Vasser, who spent more than three hours with the condemned man Tuesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center, said he read the Bible and expressed hope that his four sisters and three brothers would comfort each other after his death.

Young, 28, spent nine years on death row for murdering three elderly Macon residents during a 1974 rampage. Coleman Brice, 85, his wife Gladys, 83, and Katie Davis, 83, were beaten and kicked to death in their homes.

Three other elderly residents of Young’s racially mixed neighborhood were seriously injured in similar attacks. All six were white.

Young is the sixth man, and the fifth black, to be executed in Georgia since the state resumed using the electric chair in 1983 after a 19-year suspension.

Mrs. Vasser, who lives near Houston, Texas, said her brother never acknowledged the murders.

″I don’t think he knows,″ she said, adding that he was ″real, real out on drugs″ when the attacks occurred.

Mrs. Vasser and another sister, Annie Duncan of Milledgeville, were among Young’s last visitors Tuesday.

″We read the Bible, we cried and when we left he had a smile on his face,″ Mrs. Vasser said in a telephone interview. ″He had peace within … and, having come to know Christ, he was calm.″

No representatives of the victims’ families were at the prison for the execution.

Young’s attorneys filed numerous last-minute appeals based on the admission of his trial lawyer that he was under the influence of drugs while representing Young. But Young’s last chance for a stay vanished Tuesday evening when the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his appeal request by 5-3.

About four hours later, Young was escorted into the execution chamber and strapped into the varnished wooden chair by six guards.

In a barely audible final statement delivered to 12 official witnesses, Young complained that poor people and blacks were ″pawns of society.″

″Being born black in America was against me,″ he said. ″Y’all cry that America was built on Christianity, I say it was built on slavery.″

At 12:15 a.m., Warden Ralph Kemp read the court’s execution order and two guards placed a leather harness over Young’s shaved head, while two others attached electrodes to his right leg and head.

Then, with a leather mask over his face, 1,080 volts of electricity was applied.

Two minutes later the current was turned off and his body was allowed to cool for six minutes before two doctors pronounced him dead.

Outside the central Georgia prison, about 30 death penalty opponents staged a 45-minute vigil, holding candles and singing hymns.

About 20 people demonstrated in favor of the execution, including Ed Stephens, grand dragon of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan, and two other robed Klansmen. The two groups were separated by a barbed wire fence.

https://apnews.com/article/3618d56eb2dfb6d1c53cf6cbc8b47bb8

Stephen Morin Texas Execution

Stephen Morin was a serial killer who was executed by the State of Texas for numerous murders of young girls and boys. According to court documents Stephen Morin was responsible for the murders of forty young women and seven men in the 1970s and 1980s. Stephen Morin would be convicted and sentenced to death. Stephen Morin would be executed by lethal injection on March 13 1985

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Stephen Peter Morin, a Christian convert three times condemned for murdering young women, accepted his death sentence without resistance and was executed early Wednesday, ending his life with a prayer.

Morin, 34, was pronounced dead at 12:55 a.m. CST, after medics spent nearly an hour trying to find a vein to accept the tube carrying a lethal cocktail of drugs.

Morin was executed for the Dec. 11, 1981, shooting death of Carrie Marie Scott, 21, outside a San Antonio restaurant.

He was also under death sentences for the Dec. 3, 1981, slaying of Janna Bruce, 21, in Corpus Christi, Texas, and for the November 1981 killing of Denver waitress Sheila Ann Whalen, 23.

Morin was strapped to a gurney at 12:03 a.m. CST, offering no resistance. Medics, who said his veins were ‘shot’ by drug use, probed for a vein until 12:44 a.m. CST, when a saline solution was injected into his arm, said Texas Department of Corrections spokesman Charles Brown.

Morin’s final statement was a prayer for forgiveness.

‘Father forgive these people,’ he said, ‘for they know not what they do. Forgive them as you have forgiven me and I have forgiven them.’

His last words were: ‘Lord Jesus, I commit my soul to you.’

Morin then blew a kiss to a woman witness. As the poison flowed into his veins, Morin drew one deep breath, his last.

State District Judge David Berchelmann in San Antonio and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin had earlier denied motions by Gerald Goldstein, general counsel for the Texas Civil Liberties Union, to stay the execution.

Morin is the 40th convict executed in the United States and the sixth in Texas since the Supreme Court lifted its ban on capital punishment in 1976.

Morin, who began a fast out of religious motivation Tuesday, requested bread without yeast for his last meal.

The former cocaine addict and drifter from Providence, R.I., said he was converted to Christianity by his last kidnap victim who played tapes by the Rev. Kenneth Copeland, a Texas evangelist.

Morin had asked that no appeals be made to stop his death but Goldstein questioned his mental competence.

‘I am not asking for a stay. If one is granted, I will take it,’ prison spokesman Phil Guthrie told Goldstein Tuesday night.

On a 36-minute trip Tuesday morning from death row to the downtown Huntsville prison where the execution chamber is located, Morin ‘appeared to be in good spirits,’ Guthrie said.

‘At one point he jokingly asked the group if they’d like to stop and go fishing,’ Guthrie said.

Prison Warden Jack Pursley quoted Morin as saying his fate was ‘in the hands of the Lord.’

Morin claimed he was converted to Christianity by kidnap victim Margaret Mayfield Palm. She testified that after Morin abducted her at gunpoint to escape police hunting him for Scott’s murder, they drove around for 10 hours reading from her handwritten journal of Bible verses and listening to tapes by Copeland.

Morin was arrested at bus station after he freed Palm and she told police he planned to take a bus to Fort Worth to surrender to Copeland, an evangelist the prisoner asked to witness the execution.

Morin was on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list when he was arrested. A federal fugitive warrant charged him with the 1976 kidnapping and rape of a 14-year-old San Francisco girl. He also was a suspect in several rapes, abductions and murders of young women in Las Vegas, Utah, Indiana, California and New York.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/03/13/Stephen-Peter-Morin-a-Christian-convert-three-times-condemned/8207479538000/

Johnny Witt Florida Execution

Johnny Witt was executed by the State of Florida for the sexual assault and murder of an eleven year old boy. According to court documents Johnny Witt and Gary Tillman would kidnap eleven year old Jonathan Kushner. The boy would be sexually assaulted and murdered. Johnny Witt would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Johnny Witt would be executed by way of the electric chair on March 6, 1985. Gary Tillman was sentenced to life in prison.

Johnny Witt More News

Johnny Paul Witt, once told by his father that he would ″never amount to anything,″ was put to death Wednesday in Florida’s electric chair for killing, sexually abusing and mutilating an 11-year-old boy.

Witt, 42, convicted for the fatal assault on the son of a University of South Florida professor, died at 7:10 a.m., despite clemency pleas by his mother who said it was unfair to execute him since a co-defendant received a life term.

When asked if he had any last words, Witt mumbled, ″No, I don’t have any″ as he chewed on his lip.

A dark mask was lowered over his shaved head and a hooded executioner, who was paid $150, pulled the switch that sent 2,000 volts through Witt’s body. The inmate jerked upward and the color faded slowly from his balled hands after the surge hit.

Witt was condemned for the murder of Jonathan Mark Kushner, who was riding his bicycle to a convenience store to buy candy when he was attacked Oct. 28, 1973.

Witt was the second killer executed in the state this year and the 12th man put to death in Florida’s electric chair since 1979. Witt became the 39th inmate executed in the nation since capital punishment was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.

″The crime for which Mr. Witt was convicted a decade ago was a particularly brutal murder of a young child,″ said Gov. Bob Graham. ″Mr. Witt has paid with his own life for the innocent life he took so viciously.″

Witt’s mother, Dorothy Witt of Knoxville, Tenn., spent four hours with her son Tuesday night and left the Florida State Prison near Starke just hours before the execution.

She repeatedly had written to the governor and other officials seeking a reprieve for her son, saying he shouldn’t die when co-defendant Gary Tillman was given a life sentence for pleading guilty and testifying against Witt.

She said Witt was unhappy for much of his life and had been told by his father that ″he was no good and would never amount to anything.″

As a boy, Witt sang solos in church, she said.

Witt requested no final meal but was given an omelet, which he ″kind of nibbled at,″ before being taken from his holding cell to the nearby oak electric chair, said Department of Corrections spokesman Vernon Bradford.

Late Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-3 to reject an emergency appeal aimed at temporarily sparing Witt’s life.

As Witt was led into the death chamber at 6:58 a.m., he looked through a window scanning the faces of the witnesses on the other side of a wall. He sighed heavily when strapped into the chair.

Among the witnesses were Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Detectives Gary Gainey and Rocky Rodriguez, who investigated the crime.

The young victim was pedaling to a convenience store near the family home when he was knocked from his bike, bound and gagged and driven to an orange grove. He was gagged so tightly that he smothered. According to court records, when the men opened the trunk and found the boy dead, the killers sexually abused and mutilated his body.

Witt’s wife, Donna, reported to police that her husband had confessed to killing the boy.

Another murderer, William Middleton Jr., also had been scheduled to die Wednesday morning but received a federal court stay Tuesday. Two other death row inmates are scheduled to die March 19

https://apnews.com/article/a07d388ae0a71c4c177afd47fddd5088

Van Solomon Georgia Execution

Van Solomon was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of a store manager during a robbery. According to court documents Van Solomon would shoot and kill the store manager during a robbery. Van Solomon who was a former Minister was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Van Solomon would be executed by way of the electric chair on February 20 1985

Van Solomon More News

Van Roosevelt Solomon, a former minister who was once a robbery-shooting victim himself, was executed in Georgia’s electric chair early Wednesday for the 1979 torture-murder of a convenience store manager.

Solomon went to the execution chamber after a final meal of fruit and chocolate ice cream and was put to death with a single, two-minute surge of 2,080 volts of electricity.

The 41-yearold former Oklahoma Baptist minister was pronounced dead at 12:27 a.m. EST. Prison officials said his body was turned over to his family for cremation.

‘I would like to say I would like to give my blessing to all the people who tried to save my life,’ Solomon said after being strapped into the electric chair.

Among those who joined the fight to save Solomon was was the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who said his execution would be ‘a travesty.’

Solomon walked into the execution chamber calmly and spoke quietly to prison guards who strapped his arms, legs and chest into the wooden chair. After making his final statement, Solomon prayed briefly with the prison chaplain, then stared intently while warden Ralph Kemp read his death sentence

When the electricity surged through Solomon, he bolted upright with clenched fists. Afterwards, his torso relaxed and slumped forward and moments later he was prounounced dead by two prison physicians.

Defense attorney George Kendall, who witnessed the execution, sighed deeply, closed his eyes, lowered his head briefly, then stared intently at his dead client before leaving the execution chamber.

About 50 demonstrators stood in a light rain outside the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center. Death penalty protesters decried executions as ‘modern day crucifixions’ while capital punishment advocates called it ‘a permanent attitude adjustment.’

Hours before Solomon was put to death, the Supreme Court and Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles refused his pleas for a stay and clemency.

He became the 38th convict executed in the nation and the fifth put to death in Georgia’s electric chair since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Solomon was sentenced to death for killing Roger Dennis Tackett, the manager of a convenience store in Smyrna. Five years earlier, Solomon almost died when he was shot in the stomach during a holdup of a downtown Atlanta grocery store he managed.

Defense attorneys insist Solomon’s accomplice, death row inmate Brandon Jones, pumped five bullets into Tackett, a 35-year-old Phi Betta Kappa graduate of Georgetown University and father of a 7-year-old daughter.

Prosecutor Tom Charron disagreed. He said there were two pistols and both men had gunpowder residue on their hands.

‘They shot his thumb off as he was dying because they wanted to know where the money was,’ said Charron, who called the slaying ‘particularly horrible.’

The victim’s father, Norman Tackett, 72, said the execution would ease his pain ‘to some extent.’

‘They have all the evidence that proves they’re guilty and they should have to suffer too,’ he said.

The condemned killer spent his final day visiting relatives, including his mother, sisters, aunts, nieces and nephews.

Solomon, the son of an alcoholic father and pious mother, served 3 years in Oklahoma prisons for assault and armed robbery before becoming an assistant pastor of a Baptist church in Lawton, Okla.

Friends in Lawton and Atlanta, where Solomon moved in 1973, say he took in numerous homeless and needy people and the pastor of his Lawton church called him ‘a caring and deeply Christian man.’

Defense attorneys say the jury that sentenced Solomon to death was never told about his past good deeds.

Coretta Scott King wrote the pardons board that Solomon’s execution ‘would be a travesty of justice.’

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/02/20/Van-Roosevelt-Solomon-a-former-minister-who-was-once/8441477723600/