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Robert Roberson Execution Scheduled For 10/17/24

The State of Texas is getting ready to execute Robert Roberson on Thursday, October 17 2024 for the murder of his two year old daughter Nikki back in 2002

According to court documents Robert Roberson would bring his daughter to an emergency room in Palestine Texas and the nurses and doctors immediately believed that the toddler was a victim of abuse due to bruising on her body. The doctors would declare that the little girl died from shaken baby syndrome.

Police would then say that Robert Roberson lack of reaction proved that he had murdered the child. Roberson who is autistic would be arrested and charged with murder

Robert Roberson would be convicted and sentenced to death

Since then Roberson lawyers have said that the shaken baby syndrome was a misdiagnosis and that Nikki Roberson died from sepsis caused from double pneumonia on top of the effects of medications which were later considered to be unfit to give to a young child

So far all efforts from Robert Roberson lawyers have had little effect and Texas is planning on executing Roberson by lethal injection on Thursday

Update – Robert Roberson execution was called off ninety minutes before he was scheduled to be executed as a judge wanted to review the case further

Robert Roberson Execution News

Texas this week plans to execute Robert Roberson, whose attorneys say was wrongfully convicted of murdering his 2-year-old daughter more than 20 years ago.

His advocates contend Roberson’s sickly toddler, Nikki Curtis, died of double pneumonia that had progressed to sepsis, her illness further exacerbated by a combination of medicines now seen as unsuitable for children.

But when Roberson took Nikki to a hospital, doctors and nurses immediately diagnosed her with suspected abuse based on bruises and injuries to Nikki’s head, including severe brain swelling and bleeding in her brain and at the back of her eyes, court documents show.

The inmate’s attorneys call that a misdiagnosis – and also discredit shaken baby syndrome on its face, despite broad consensus among pediatricians it is legitimate.

The lawyers say, too, Roberson’s behavior in the hospital was misjudged. His strange, “flat” demeanor, then viewed by medical staff and police as evidence of his guilt, was a manifestation of Roberson’s autism, which went undiagnosed until 2018.

“It wasn’t a crime committed,” Roberson, 57, told CNN about a week before his scheduled lethal injection. “I was falsely, wrongly convicted of a crime – they said it was a crime, but it wasn’t no crime and stuff because I had a sick little girl, you know?”

Still, Texas intends to kill Roberson on Thursday in what his attorneys say would make him the first person in the United States executed on a shaken baby syndrome-based conviction as the diagnosis comes under increasing scrutiny in US courts.

His innocence claim also highlights an inherent risk of capital punishment: a potentially innocent person could be put to death. At least 200 people – 18 in Texas – have been exonerated since 1973 after being convicted and sentenced to die, the Death Penalty Information Center finds.

Among advocates for Roberson are the Innocence Project, autism advocacy groups concerned about the role his disability may have played in his conviction, a bipartisan group of more than 80 Texas legislators and the famous courtroom thriller author John Grisham.

Also in Roberson’s corner is Brian Wharton, a former Palestine, Texas, detective who regrets his part in what he now feels was a too-narrowly focused investigation into Nikki’s death. The shaken baby syndrome diagnosis from doctors and nurses, their emotional response to Nikki’s condition and Roberson’s odd reaction all stacked against the then-suspect, said Wharton.

“Those two things are playing against each other – the emotional upheaval of the ER staff alongside the father who is just there,” he told CNN. “And then when you add to that this accusation of shaken baby syndrome, that affirms for you all the emotions you had in the ER and makes that flat affect much more suspect.”

“The investigative or the suspicious mind takes over and leads the investigation,” he said. “Very early on, Robert was the focus of everything to the exclusion of any other possibilities.”

Roberson’s attorneys are not disputing that babies can and do die from being shaken. But they contend that more benign explanations, including illness, can mimic the symptoms of shaking, and those alternative explanations should be ruled out before a medical expert testifies to a certainty that the cause of death was abuse.

Shaken baby syndrome is accepted as a valid diagnosis by the American Academy of Pediatrics and supported by child abuse pediatricians who spoke with CNN. The condition, first described in the mid-1970s, has for the past 15 or so years been considered a type of “abusive head trauma” – a broader term used to reflect actions other than shaking, like an impact to a child’s head.

Abusive head trauma generally occurs when a frustrated parent or caregiver violently shakes a child and/or causes a blunt impact injury, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others say. It is the leading cause of child abuse deaths in children under age 5, the CDC says.

“There really is not a controversy in medicine about the existence of abusive head trauma. The science behind it is really quite clear,” former American Academy of Pediatrics President Dr. Lee Savio Beers told CNN for a 2021 report on how abusive head trauma cases are not coming to trial due to unsubstantiated defense claims.

However, the decision around 2009 to refer to what had been known as shaken baby syndrome as abusive head trauma was “misinterpreted” by some in legal and medical circles as an indication of “doubt in” or “invalidation” of the diagnosis of the injury itself, the American Association of Pediatrics acknowledged in 2020. The group “continues to affirm the dangers and harms of shaking infants, continues to embrace the ‘shaken baby syndrome’ diagnosis as a valid subset of the (abusive head trauma) diagnosis, and encourages pediatric practitioners to educate community stakeholders when necessary,” it added.

Criminal defense lawyers also have oversimplified how doctors diagnose abusive head trauma, child abuse pediatricians say, noting many factors are considered to determine it.

The landscape has fueled a fierce debate now playing out at the intersection of medicine and the law – with Robert Roberson’s case at center stage this week.

“The conclusion is simply (Nikki) was a victim of abusive head trauma. Unequivocally,” Dr. Sandeep Narang, a child abuse pediatrician and a lawyer, said Tuesday after he was asked by a supporter of Roberson’s defense to review trial testimony in the case.

“I thought there (was a) reasonable basis, clear, reasonable basis to find this conviction,” Narang told CNN. “And I thought this case represented a high probability of abusive head trauma, given all the total findings in this case.”

Meanwhile, courts in at least 17 states and the US Army since 1992 have exonerated 32 people convicted in shaken baby syndrome cases, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Just this month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a new trial for a man sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of injury to a child in a case that also relied on a shaken baby syndrome argument. In its ruling, the court wrote “scientific knowledge has evolved regarding SBS.”

While Robert Roberson’s conviction has been upheld on appeal, his attorneys continue to pursue that remedy. They’re due Tuesday in court to argue yet another aspect of Roberson’s case, they say, claiming the judge who scheduled his execution did not have appropriate jurisdiction and so the death warrant should be void.

They’ve also petitioned the Texas Pardons and Parole Board and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for clemency, asking for Roberson’s punishment to be commuted to a lesser sentence or he be granted a 180-day reprieve to allow time for his appeals to be argued in court.

The Anderson County District Attorney did not respond to CNN’s requests for an interview.
The death of Nikki Curtis

Robert Roberson was charged with capital murder on February 1, 2002, one day after he took Nikki to a hospital in Palestine, Texas. She wasn’t breathing, and her skin was blue.

Due to Nikki’s injuries, medical personnel were soon suspicious, and a nurse called police. Nikki, meanwhile, was flown via helicopter to a children’s hospital in Dallas, where she was later taken off life support and died.

Robert Roberson, who has three other children, had gotten custody of Nikki just two months earlier. He had learned of her only after her birth, and she spent most of her life in the custody of her maternal grandparents, who eventually agreed Roberson should have custody, court records show.

Robert Roberson told investigators he had picked the toddler up on January 30, 2002, from her maternal grandparents’ house, taken her home, put on a movie and gone to sleep in the same bed as her, the complaint against him says. They were alone.

Robert Roberson says he woke in the night to Nikki’s cries and found she had fallen 1 to 2 feet off the bed to the floor. He saw blood on her lips and a bruise under her chin, he told police per the complaint, and wiped the blood away with a washcloth. He kept her up for two hours to make sure she was OK, he said, and they eventually fell back asleep. When Roberson got up in the morning, Nikki was unresponsive, he said.

“I carried her to the hospital and stuff, you know,” he told CNN last week. “I didn’t have nothing to hide.”

A pediatrician specializing in child maltreatment at the hospital in Dallas told police Nikki was a victim of abuse. The girl’s injuries were “indicative of a shaken impact syndrome,” Dr. Janet Squires wrote in an affidavit. The Dallas County medical examiner who performed Nikki’s autopsy determined she died of blunt force head injuries and ruled the manner of death a homicide.

At trial, the state called 12 witnesses, court records show. They included Squires, who testified CT scans showed Nikki’s brain was swollen and there was blood under her skull and behind her eyes. The injuries, Squires said, could not have been explained by a “simple impact,” dismissing Roberson’s explanation about the girl’s fall off the bed.

“It’s a very violent forceful act,” she said of the shaking that would have caused Nikki’s injuries, noting it was rare for shaken baby syndrome to be diagnosed after a single, isolated instance and more likely to follow a pattern of abuse. Squires did not find evidence of old injuries, such as fractures or blood, she testified; she was not asked nor did she address whether such a pattern of abuse may have been a factor in Nikki’s case.

“It is not something that ever happens accidentally,” Squires testified. She did not respond to CNN’s requests in early October for an interview.

Narang, the child abuse pediatrician and lawyer, further pointed to trial testimony of the 11-year-old niece and 10-year-old daughter of Roberson’s then-girlfriend, both of whom said they had seen him shake Nikki on previous occasions – and the girlfriend’s claim Roberson waited to take Nikki to the hospital.

Robert Roberson has denied the girls had seen him shake Nikki and attributed the delay to his being in a state of shock and dressing Nikki before taking her for help.

“I couldn’t be specific in telling you whether it was the child’s head impacting another object or surface or whether it was the defendant’s hand or leg or something else hitting the child’s head,” added Narang, who reviewed the case in light of today’s science. “But there were signs of impact about this child’s head in multiple different locations.”

Nikki’s maternal grandfather, Larry Bowman, declined to comment to CNN except to say, “We don’t want nothing to do with it. We have left it up to the Lord and the law.”
Doctors’ approach was skewed, defense lawyers say

Robert Roberson’s attorneys have disputed the idea Nikki was a victim of shaken baby syndrome, pointing in part to a 2001 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics they say unfairly skewed how Nikki’s doctors viewed the situation: “Although physical abuse in the past has been a diagnosis of exclusion,” it reads in part, “data regarding the nature and frequency of head trauma consistently support the need for a presumption of child abuse when a child younger than 1 year has suffered an intracranial injury.”

According to Roberson’s advocates, this “presumption” language led the doctors treating Nikki to conclude Roberson had abused her without considering other possibilities.

There are other explanations, too, Roberson’s attorneys claim, for why the toddler was hurt.

Nikki – who was plagued with health problems requiring frequent doctor visits in her young life, court records show – was fighting an upper respiratory infection in the days before her death. Two days earlier, she had visited the emergency room with a 104.5-degree fever, court records show.

Nikki was also prescribed both promethazine and codeine. Both would have further hindered her ability to breathe, Roberson’s team contends, causing hypoxia, which they claim can cause the brain to swell and the same bleeding beneath the skull. Those medications are now seen as inappropriate for someone Nikki’s age and in her condition, Roberson’s attorneys say.

Taken together, the illness, her prescriptions and her alleged fall off the bed would explain Nikki’s symptoms, Roberson’s proponents claim.
‘There’s no controversy in the medical field’

Driving home the lack of unanimity within medical and scientific circles over abusive head trauma is a letter included with Roberson’s clemency petition from 34 scientists and doctors across disciplines and institutions who voice support for the arguments of the inmate’s attorneys.

Another group that has taken up his innocence claim – the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences – also raised this issue in a June filing in the case to the US Supreme Court:

“It is an expert’s opinion, not simply objective fact, that leads to the accusation and often to the conviction in a case involving an allegation of shaken baby syndrome,” Kate Judson, the center’s executive director, said last month at a news conference.

“The physician is the one who decides that there was a crime, who committed the crime, and testifies about the person’s mental state,” she said. “There really aren’t other parallels in the law where we allow that, and it’s allowed here.”

However, the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Child Abuse and Neglect asserted without caveat: Abusive head trauma “is real.”

“I don’t know what to say about the legal controversy,” Dr. Antoinette Laskey told CNN. “This is real, it affects children, it affects families … I want to help children; I don’t want to diagnose abuse: That’s a bad day.”

As to claims of exonerations in shaken baby syndrome cases, Laskey pointed to a 2021 paper authored by Narang and others that found just 3% of all such convictions between 2008 and 2018 were overturned, and only 1% of them were overturned because of medical evidence.

Indeed, the only time abusive head trauma is referred to as “junk science” is “in the legal arena,” said Laskey, who was not familiar with Roberson’s case and did not speak to it.

“There’s no controversy in the medical field that takes care of children,” she said, struggling with the idea families impacted by abusive head trauma – whose children had been injured or killed – would be told “their reality is not reality.”
‘We’re seeking a conviction … but we are not seeking justice’

As the days tick down, Roberson is “trying to keep hope alive, each and every day” that he’ll eventually leave death row. He would get a job, he told CNN, and would like to attend ministry school.

And he’d like to visit Nikki’s grave, wherever it is – he’s never been told.

“I don’t want to get too far ahead in the future, planning too much,” he said. “It’s good to plan, you know … I don’t want to get too far in the future, but I’m still hanging onto hope one day, I’ll be able to do that.”

In the meantime, Roberson holds no ill will, he said, toward the people who put him behind bars, including Wharton, the detective.

“Unforgiveness is only going to hurt us, you know? That don’t mean I don’t like what they did to me,” Roberson said, also referring to the district attorney. “But, no, I don’t hate them, I don’t have no anger against them, you know. And one day I’m hoping and praying they would do the right thing.”

Wharton eventually left policing and went into ministry. But the Roberson case stayed with him: He was comfortable with the conviction, he said, but never the death penalty. Over the years, he checked the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website to see if Roberson was still there, reassuring himself someone was still working on his appeals.

When Gretchen Sween, Roberson’s attorney, showed up six or eight years ago on Wharton’s doorstep and asked to speak with him about the case, he did, saying he “halfway expected somebody to show up.”

Now, Wharton is sure Roberson’s life should be spared, and he bemoans what he feels is a “pride” within the justice system resistant to acknowledging a mistake. Without shaken baby syndrome, he said, “there’s nothing that’s chargeable here.

He was doing what a father should do,” Wharton said. “He was doing his best with his limited resources to get his child treated, care for her, and it just fell apart.

“Justice is more than simply law enforcement … We are not dispensers of justice. Justice is something that’s much bigger than us and beyond us, that we are always seeking justice. And it just felt like that’s not what’s happening here. We’re seeking a conviction. We’re seeking to put someone in prison or on death row, but we are not seeking justice.”

Earlier this year, Wharton visited Roberson for the first time and asked for his forgiveness, which the inmate granted in a New York Times Op-Ed video. The moment, Wharton said, was hard to describe.

“It’s wonderful to receive his forgiveness,” Wharton said. “But if the state continues on this course and kills him, I will know within myself somehow that he forgave me, but I can’t forgive myself. (He’ll be) dead as a consequence of the work I did.”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/13/us/robert-roberson-execution-shaken-baby-syndrome/index.html

Garcia White Execution Scheduled For Today

Garcia White is scheduled to be executed by the State of Texas on October 1 2024 for the murders of twin girls

According to court documents Garcia White would be convicted of the murders of Annette and Bernette Edwards, the sixteen year old girls were murdered along with their mother

Garcia White would also confess to the murders of Greta Williams who would be beaten to death and to the murder of Hai Pham

It was when Garcia White was being investigated for the murder of Hai Pham when officers learned he was responsible for the Edwards family murders

Garcia White would be convicted of the murders of Annette and Bernette Edwards and sentenced to death

White lawyers do not deny that their client is responsible for the murders however they are trying to get his death sentence overturned due to brain damage from football injuries and drug addictions

Garcia White Execution News

A Texas man linked to five killings and convicted of fatally stabbing twin 16-year-old girls more than three decades ago is facing execution on Tuesday evening.

Garcia White was condemned for the December 1989 killings of Annette and Bernette Edwards. The bodies of the twin girls and their mother, Bonita Edwards, were found in their Houston apartment.

White, 61, a former college football player who later worked as a fry cook, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection Tuesday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. White would be the sixth inmate put to death in the U.S. in the last 11 days.

Testimony showed White went to the girls’ Houston home to smoke crack with their mother, Bonita, who also was fatally stabbed. When the girls came out of their room to see what had happened, White attacked them. Evidence showed White broke down the locked door of the girls’ bedroom. He was later tied to the deaths of a grocery store owner and another woman.

“Garcia White committed five murders in three different transactions and two of his victims were teenage girls. This is the type of case that the death penalty was intended for,” said Josh Reiss, chief of the Post-Conviction Writs Division with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Houston.

White’s lawyers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution after lower courts previously rejected his petitions for a stay. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Friday denied White’s request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant him a 30-day reprieve.

His lawyers argued that Texas’ top criminal appeals court has refused “to accept medical evidence and strong factual backing” showing White is intellectually disabled.

The Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of intellectually disabled people. But it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities. Justices have wrestled with how much discretion to allow.

White’s lawyers also accused the Texas appeals court of not allowing his defense team to present evidence that could spare him a death sentence, including DNA evidence that another man also was at the crime scene and scientific evidence that would show White was “likely suffering from a cocaine induced psychotic break during his actions.”

White’s lawyers also argued he is entitled to a new review of his death sentence, alleging the Texas appeals court has created a new scheme for sentencing in capital punishment cases after a recent Supreme Court ruling in another Texas death row case.

“Mr. White’s case illustrates everything wrong with the current death penalty in Texas -– he has evidence that he is intellectually disabled which the (Texas appeals court) refuses to permit him to develop. He has significant evidence that could result in a sentence other than death at punishment but cannot present it or develop it,” White’s attorneys said in their petition to the high court.

In a filing to the Supreme Court, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said White has not presented evidence to support his claim he is intellectually disabled. The filing also said White’s claims of evidence of another person at the crime scene and that cocaine use affected his actions have previously been rejected by the courts.

“White presents no reason to delay his execution date any longer. The Edwards family — and the victims of White’s other murders … deserve justice for his decades-old crimes,” the attorney general’s office said.

The deaths of the twin girls and their mother went unsolved for about six years until White confessed to the killings after he was arrested in connection with the July 1995 death of grocery store owner Hai Van Pham, who was fatally beaten during a robbery at his business. Police said White also confessed to fatally beating another woman, Greta Williams, in 1989.

White would be the fifth inmate put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, and the 19th in the U.S

https://apnews.com/article/texas-execution-garcia-white-76c56a0a76ab94991b2d2b77e3faaad8

Ruben Gutierrez Execution Scheduled For Today

The State of Texas is getting ready to executed Ruben Gutierrez for the murder of Escolastica Harrison in 1998

According to court documents Ruben Gutierrez and two accomplices would break into the home of 85 year old Escolastica Harrison. During the robbery the elderly woman would be beaten and stabbed to death

Ruben Gutierrez would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Gutierrez has insisted over the years that he had nothing to do with the murder of Esccolastica Harrison and has been pushing for DNA testing to prove his innocence

Ruben Gutierrez will be put to death by lethal injection tonight, July 16 2024, unless he gets a last minute stay

Update- The execution was postponed at the last minute by the Supreme Court due to the DNA issues

Ruben Gutierrez Execution News

Texas is set to execute Ruben Gutierrez on Tuesday for the 1998 murder of an elderly woman in Brownsville after he spent the past decade fighting for DNA testing of evidence that he says would prove he did not kill her.

Gutierrez would be the third person executed by the state of Texas this year. For the rest of 2024, Texas has scheduled five more executions, the same as all other states combined, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Gutierrez, now 47, was sentenced to death in 1999 for the stabbing and beating murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison during a home robbery. Harrison, who lived with her nephew in the mobile home park she owned and who distrusted banks, had $600,000 stashed in her home at the time of her death, according to court records.

Alex Hernandez, the victim’s nephew and godson, planned to drive six hours from his home in Brownsville to the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville to attend the execution with his girlfriend and a few friends on Tuesday. He had made the trip in 2020 and was in the waiting room when the warden told him the U.S. Supreme Court had halted Gutierrez’s execution just over an hour before it was set to take place. He thought the news was a “really bad joke.”

Now, four years later, “it’s just really hit home,” he said on Monday. “It’s really heart-wrenching, heartbreaking again having to relive it.”

Hernandez, 55, remembered his aunt, whom family members affectionately called “Aunt Peco,” as “a really happy person, always wanting to sing and always having a smile on her face.”

She taught ESL at the local elementary school, where Hernandez said she was a “really strict teacher” intent on helping her students, many of whom were migrants, learn English. Hernandez spent summers growing up with his aunt and uncle, and he recalled chasing butterflies around the trailer park and eating peaches plucked off the trees that surrounded Harrison’s home.

“She was just the most beautiful person,” he said. “She wasn’t just some old lady.”

Gutierrez and two other suspects — Rene Garcia and Pedro Gracia — were accused of planning to rob Harrison, but each pegged the other two for the murder. Garcia, who pleaded guilty, is serving a life sentence. Gracia was released from jail on a $75,000 bond and vanished. He has been wanted by authorities since.

Gutierrez maintains that he did not kill Harrison, that he was not inside her home when she was killed and that he did not know of nor consent to any intention to kill her.

In multiple appeals, Gutierrez has requested, and been denied, DNA testing of evidence that was collected at the scene but never tested, including fingernail scrapings, a hair found in Harrison’s hand and blood stains. He has argued that DNA testing of those materials would corroborate his claims that he did not kill Harrison, and because the court has denied his requests for testing, Gutierrez has argued that his due process rights were violated, rendering his execution unjust and premature.

“I just don’t understand what they’re afraid of,” said Shawn Nolan, Gutierrez’s lawyer. If the case happened today, he added, “they would test everything. That’s what they do with these cases, always, especially in a murder case, and especially in a capital case.”

His lawyers also argued that a jury would not have sentenced Gutierrez to death if the results of DNA testing pointed to another suspect as the killer.

“A juror who’s going to decide whether they’re going to sentence somebody to death or not surely should know whether that person was the actual killer,” Nolan said. “In this case, the prosecution argued to the jury that Ruben was the actual killer, even though there was no direct evidence of that.”

Cameron County prosecutors argued that because there may have been multiple killers, any evidence tested that did not match Gutierrez’s DNA would not prove his innocence.

Prosecutors also argued that under Texas’ law of parties — which allows all those involved in a crime to be held criminally responsible for it, even if they did not carry it out themselves — Gutierrez would remain eligible for the death penalty, regardless of any DNA test results, given his admission that he had “planned the whole rip off.”

Gutierrez has maintained that the statement he gave about planning the robbery was false, and that he had “assented to it only after detectives threatened to arrest his wife and take away his children,” his attorneys said in a June 2019 court filing.

Gutierrez’s lawyers have further argued that evidence suggests that Harrison’s nephew, Avel Cuellar, masterminded the robbery. Cuellar, who is now dead, was initially considered a suspect by law enforcement but then dropped from the investigation.

In 2019, Gutierrez’s attorneys also challenged the constitutionality of a Texas law that limits when evidence can be DNA-tested after conviction. That law requires a convicted person, in order to get DNA testing, to show that he “would not have been convicted if exculpatory results had been obtained through DNA testing.”

“It’s a catch-22,” Nolan said.

Nolan argued, and a federal district court agreed, that Texas’ DNA statute was unconstitutional because it denied Gutierrez the ability to test evidence that would demonstrate his innocence and challenge his death sentence. But the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling this year, saying the federal district court did not have jurisdiction over Gutierrez’s lawsuit.

In a petition that was still pending as of Tuesday morning, Gutierrez’s attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit’s ruling and halt his execution. Gutierrez’s application for clemency was denied on Friday.

Gutierrez’s execution has been delayed several times since he was sentenced to death 25 years ago.

In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court halted Gutierrez’s execution just over an hour before he was set to die on the basis of an appeal he had filed saying that a new Texas policy banning religious advisers in the execution room with inmates violated his religious freedoms.

His execution was previously stayed in October 2019 by Texas’ highest criminal court due to a clerical error. Gutierrez’s attorneys had argued his death warrant was invalid because it didn’t have the proper seal from the court when it was delivered to the sheriff and an attorney. Before that, a federal district judge halted a September 2018 execution date to give Gutierrez’s new attorney more time to investigate his case.

Hernandez, the victim’s nephew and godson, said he had promised his mother that he would bear witness to Gutierrez’s execution.

“I’m not looking forward to the execution. I’m looking forward to the end,” he said. “My aunt would probably want me to forgive him, and I do. But he has to pay for his crime.”

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/16/texas-execution-death-penalty-ruben-gutierrez

Ramiro Gonzales Execution Scheduled For Today

The State of Texas is getting ready to execute Ramiro Gonzales for the sexual assault and murder of Bridget Townsend in 2001

According to court documents Ramiro Gonzales would go to the home of Bridget Townsend boyfriend in order to rob him of drugs and money. However once at the home Ramiro was confronted by Bridget Townsend. Gonzales would sexually assault and murder the teen girl

Ramiro Gonzales would be arrested after he sexually assaulted another woman and when in custody he would confess to the murder of Bridget Townsend and lead them to her body

Ramiro Gonzales would be convicted and sentenced to death

Texas is planning on executing Ramiro Gonzales this evening, June 26 2024, by lethal injection

Update – Ramiro Gonzales was executed on June 26 2024

Ramiro Gonzales Execution News

The State of Texas is set to execute Ramiro Gonzales on Wednesday evening for a 2001 murder he committed when he was 18. His latest legal challenges were based in part on his mother’s alcohol use while she was pregnant with him and the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.

In recent pleadings, Gonzales, now 41, said that he never received a proper post-conviction review and that he sought to reduce his sentence to life in prison. Gonzales also argued that he is ineligible for capital punishment since a state expert recanted testimony that Gonzales would always pose a risk of violence to others — a finding that is required to receive the death penalty under Texas state law.

While serving time for an unrelated assault in 2002, Gonzales confessed to the rape and murder of Bridget Townsend in Medina County, west of San Antonio, and guided police to her remains. Gonzales fatally shot Townsend in 2001, when both were 18 years old, after she intervened while he was trying to steal drugs at the home of her boyfriend, who was his drug dealer, according to court records.

In a clemency application, Gonzales said that while on death row since 2006, he has devoted his life to Christianity and served as a spiritual leader for others facing the death penalty. On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously rejected Gonzales’ request for leniency.

In a statement on Monday, Gonzales’ attorneys, Thea Posel and Raoul Schonemann, called their client “a man who today is, in almost every sense, a different person than he was when he killed Bridget Townsend in 2001.”

“Ramiro lives this transformation every day,” they said, “and it is evident to prison officials, faith leaders, friends, family, his lawyers and many people across the country and the world who have seen and been touched by his story, his growth, his faith and his commitment to change.”

A pleading filed this month by Gonzales’ legal team challenging his death sentence asserted that he didn’t receive effective counsel during his post-conviction review. His initial petition for that review was deemed “frivolous” by the courts.

Gonzales’ court-appointed lawyer at the time did not conduct an investigation and failed to present evidence in the initial petition that Gonzales’ mother regularly drank alcohol during her pregnancy, a June pleading read. Gonzales was later diagnosed with a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. The initial petition also failed to outline the impact of sexual abuse by a family member that Gonzales endured throughout his childhood, according to court filings.

Gonzales never had the “one full and fair opportunity” to file an adequate habeas petition, Posel said.

Posel said such a deficient initial petition would not happen today, now that attorneys and investigators from the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, which opened in 2010, are available for nearly all capital post-conviction cases.

Gonzales’ pleading this month cited research about his childhood conducted by Kate Porterfield, a clinical psychologist who studies the impact of trauma on children.

“The crimes that he committed are tragically and inextricably linked to the trauma he suffered and the lack of care provided to him,” Porterfield said of Gonzales’ childhood.

The failure to properly investigate and present this evidence during Gonzales’ initial habeas petition showed that his lawyer was ineffective, his current legal team argued while asking the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider its dismissal. The state’s highest criminal court denied the request on Monday.

Gonzales’ legal team asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ denial and halt his execution, arguing that Gonzales does not present a future danger to others and so cannot be executed under Texas law. That petition was still pending as of Wednesday morning.

In his clemency application, Gonzales said he feels daily remorse for his actions and the impact the killing has had on Townsend’s family.

“I took everything that was valuable from a mother, just because of my stupidity, because of what I did, because of my actions. And you can’t give that back,” Gonzales said in a video submitted to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on June 4 as part of his clemency application.

In 2022, Gonzales requested a reprieve to donate a kidney to a stranger, which was denied. But that same year, the court halted Gonzales’ execution to consider the false testimony by Dr. Edward Gripon, a forensic psychiatrist.

During the punishment phase of Gonzales’ trial, Gripon had testified that there was substantial evidence that people who commit rape will likely continue committing sexual offenses. Gripon later reported that those statistics are inaccurate. State courts ruled that despite the reversal, the execution could take place.

Gonzales’ attorneys had also attempted to halt his execution because of his age at the time of the crime. They cited multiple studies and medical or legal associations that have proposed raising the age for death penalty eligibility from 18 to 21, based on brain development.

Alongside his clemency application, a group of faith leaders had sent a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott, asking him to spare Gonzales’ life and allow him to spend the rest of his life serving others in custody.

“Even if he never sees the light of day as a free person, he can bring that inner light to others in the darkest corners of our society just by being there and sharing the faith he has,” said Cantor Michael Zoosman, co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty, in the clemency video.

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/06/26/texas-execution-ramiro-gonzales

Ramiro Gonzales Execution

Texas executed Ramiro Gonzales by lethal injection on Wednesday for a 2001 murder, the state Department of Criminal Justice said, following unsuccessful appeals to the US Supreme Court that argued, in part, he should have been ineligible for the death penalty under state law because he is no longer dangerous.

Gonzales, 41, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2006 for the sexual assault and killing of 18-year-old Bridget Townsend, court records show. His execution was the first of two – the other in Oklahoma – scheduled this week in the United States.

Gonzales was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m., the state criminal justice department said.

The department provided Gonzales’ last statement before he was executed, in which he repeatedly apologized to the Townsend family and said he “never stopped praying” for their forgiveness: “I can’t put into words the pain I have caused y’all, the hurt what I took away that I cannot give back.”

“I hope this apology is enough. I lived the rest of this life for you guys to the best of my ability for restitution, restoration, taking responsibility,” Gonzales said. “I never stopped praying that you would forgive me and that one day I would have this opportunity to apologize.”

During the penalty phase of Gonzales’ trial, jurors were required to find, as they are in all capital cases in Texas, a “probability” Gonzales would continue to “commit criminal acts of violence.” Without this determination, capital defendants in the Lone Star State are not eligible for the death penalty, per state law.

In their appeals to the Supreme Court, Gonzales’ attorneys said his track record these last 18 years shows he is not dangerous, pointing to his commitment to his Christian faith, ministry to others behind bars and his unsuccessful attempts to donate a kidney to a stranger in need.

Additionally, they said the evidence relied upon to make the finding of future dangerousness was false: An expert witness who diagnosed the inmate with antisocial personality disorder relied on recidivism data later found to be incorrect, and he has since evaluated Gonzales and walked back his testimony.

In a pair of brief orders Wednesday, the US Supreme Court gave no comment in its denial of Gonzales’ requests. There were no noted dissents.

Gonzales’ attorneys, Thea Posel and Raoul Schonemann, said in a statement Monday: “Ramiro not only has disproven the jury’s prediction – he has never committed a single act or threat of violence since he was sentenced to death in 2006 – but in fact actively contributes to prison society in exceptional ways. He should not be executed.”

The state of Texas had also opposed Gonzales’ appeals, arguing in part his team had misconstrued the eligibility requirement and contending the question of whether Gonzales would continue to be a threat is not limited to the inmate’s behavior on death row.

Even when his behavior post-conviction is taken into account, “there’s undoubtedly sufficient evidence to uphold the finding of future dangerousness,” attorneys for the state wrote, pointing to the subsequent kidnapping and rape of another woman and a litany of transgressions he committed while in jail.

“Even if a jury could somehow consider events that had not happened yet, i.e., Gonzales’s behavior on death row, the jury could still have rationally believed Gonzales would be a danger in the future,” they said.

On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to recommend clemency in a 7-0 vote. Without that recommendation, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is limited by state law to issuing Gonzales a one-time 30-day reprieve.

CNN has reached out to the Medina County Criminal District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, and members of Townsend’s family for comment.

In his final statement before execution, Gonzales also thanked his family and friends, along with two officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for “the opportunity to become responsible, to learn accountability and to make good.”

Gonzales murdered Townsend in January 2001, after he called the home of his drug supplier, her boyfriend, in search of drugs, according to a 2009 Texas appeals court opinion affirming the inmate’s conviction and death sentence.

When Townsend told Gonzales her boyfriend wasn’t home, he went to the house in search of drugs. He stole money, then kidnapped Townsend, tying her hands and feet before driving her to a location near his family’s ranch, the opinion states. There, he raped and fatally shot her, it says.

The case went unsolved for 18 months. Then, while sitting in jail after pleading guilty to the rape of another woman, Gonzales confessed to Townsend’s killing and led authorities to her body.

Gonzales’ execution was the nation’s eighth this year, with the ninth slated for Thursday in Oklahoma, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit organization that tracks capital punishment in the US and has in the past been critical of the way it’s administered.

Oklahoma intends to execute Richard Rojem for the 1984 kidnapping, rape and murder of his 7-year-old stepdaughter, Layla Cummings, court records show. The state’s parole board voted last week against recommending clemency for Rojem, who claims he is innocent, according to CNN affiliate KOCO.

Rojem, like Gonzales, would be the second person executed in their respective states so far in 2024, according to the center’s data. By this time last year, 13 inmates had been put to death in the US, the data shows.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/26/us/texas-death-row-ramiro-gonzales/index.html

Ivan Cantu Execution Scheduled For 2/28/24

The State of Texas is getting ready to execute Ivan Cantu on February 28 2024

According to court documents Ivan Cantu would rob his cousin and a woman that quickly went wrong and Cantu would murder James Mosqueda and Amy Kitchen.

Ivan Cantu would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Since his convicted Cantu lawyers have brought forth a witness who admitted to lying on the stand and that alone should clear his name

If Ivan Cantu does not receive a postponement he will be executed by lethal injection this Wednesday February 28 2024

Ivan Cantu Executed On February 28 2024

Ivan Cantu News

In 20 days, state authorities are scheduled to drive death row inmate Ivan Cantu from the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, past freshly built vacation homes on Lake Livingston, along wooded East Texas roads, to the notorious, red-bricked Huntsville Unit, where Texas will execute him. That is if Cantu’s third execution date isn’t canceled like the two before.

Less than a year ago, a last-minute appeal describing false testimony during Cantu’s 2001 trial proved compelling enough for a Republican judge to pause his April 2023 execution date.

The 50-year-old who was sentenced to death for the 2000 murder of his cousin and his cousin’s fiancée, James Mosqueda and Amy Kitchen, claims that an accumulation of post-trial evidence — including a key witness who admitted he lied while testifying and the discovery of a watch Cantu was accused of stealing — is enough to overturn his conviction.

Cantu’s legal team and private investigators in recent years have unearthed these details, among others, but no state or federal court has reviewed the merits of the growing body of information questioning his guilt. But after last year’s scheduled execution was paused, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed his request for an evidentiary hearing without offering an explanation for the rejection.

“You made the touchdown, but you’re out of bounds,” Cantu told The Texas Tribune during an interview from death row last week.

Cantu’s legal team has argued in court filings that numerous abnormalities in his case are sufficient to warrant a new trial. Multiple jurors from Cantu’s original trial have said they don’t support execution. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, notoriously unfavorable to inmates, does not inspire hope for Cantu’s recently filed clemency application. And the criminal appeals court’s dismissal last year hinders Cantu’s ability to seek relief in federal courts, his lawyer said.

So for now, his execution is still scheduled for Feb. 28.

“Isn’t that crazy? I’m on death row, I have an attorney, a wonderful attorney, who knows what needs to be done to fix these problems with the court, and the rules and the laws are saying that her hands, basically her hands are tied behind her back,” Cantu said.

Cantu was convicted in 2001 for the Dallas murders of Mosqueda and Kitchen. During the trial, prosecutors pointed to bloody jeans found in Cantu’s kitchen and an allegedly stolen Rolex watch as proof that he murdered his cousin and his cousin’s fiancée, a nursing student at the time.

The Collin County district attorney’s office also relied heavily on the testimony of Amy Boettcher who pinned the murders on Cantu, her fiancée, after the two returned from a trip to Arkansas to visit her mother and stepfather. Boettcher testified that Cantu committed the murders, and took her to the crime scene, before the trip.

Police found Mosqueda’s car outside Cantu’s apartment the day after the bodies were discovered, according to court filings. Additionally, police found the bloody pants, matching the victims’ DNA, in Cantu’s trash can.

Cantu has maintained his innocence since he was arrested over 20 years ago. In his filings, Cantu argued that Mosqueda was a local drug dealer and that a rival dealer to whom he owed a lot of money killed him.

Boettcher, a crucial witness in the state’s case, said she disposed of Cantu’s bloody jeans in a trash can inside his kitchen shortly after the murders. She also testified that Cantu threw a Rolex watch belonging to Mosqueda out of a car window as the couple was driving to downtown Dallas to a club shortly after the murders.

But new details that cast doubt over Boettcher’s testimony have emerged.

A signed affidavit from the officer who performed a wellness check on Cantu, requested by Cantu’s mother after she learned his cousin was killed, stated that she did not see bloody clothes in the trash can. Cantu and Boettcher were out of state, on a trip to Arkansas, at the time of the wellness check. Cantu argues that this affidavit, which the officer provided in 2020, is proof that someone placed the clothes in his home to frame him for the murders.

Additionally, Cantu’s legal team discovered in 2019 that officers recovered the Rolex watch after finding it in Mosqueda’s home and returned it to his family shortly after the murder.

At the time of the trial, Amy Boettcher’s brother, Jeff Boettcher, also testified against Cantu. He told the jury that Cantu told him about the murders in advance and recruited him to clean up afterward. He also said that protecting his sister was paramount, because they “were in it together.”

But when Amy Boettcher died in 2021, her brother called Collin County investigators to recant his testimony.

A 2022 video of his conversation with an investigator and an attorney who traveled from Texas to Minnesota to meet with him, shows a distressed Boettcher saying that he lied during his testimony. He admitted that at the time of the trial, he was in a difficult point in his life and his testimony wasn’t reliable given he was out of the state at the time of the murders and was a frequent drug user. Boettcher expressed remorse that his testimony had helped land Cantu on death row.

“When does it become a house of cards?” Gena Bunn, Cantu’s attorney, said. “What is holding this conviction up?”

Bunn previously worked as the chief of the postconviction and capital litigation divisions of the state attorney general’s office when both U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Gov. Greg Abbott led the agency. She is hoping to appeal to the Collin County district attorney’s office and request another look at Cantu’s case in light of the recent developments.

“Let’s put on the brakes, let’s stay the execution date and look at this a little more closely,” she said.

Family members of Mosqueda and Kitchen could not be reached for comment, but there is still support for Cantu’s execution.

“Let’s hope justice is finally carried out for Amy and James, and that the execution goes forward,” read a Feb. 2 social media post from Amy Kitchen Emergency Fund, a fundraising group launched in the victims’ memory.

Last April, Cantu filed a subsequent writ of habeas corpus claiming he was wrongfully convicted with false testimony from the Boettchers. One day after the appeal was filed, Republican state district Judge Benjamin Smith withdrew his court order for Cantu’s execution — scheduled for the following week — saying the new arguments required further review. Cantu’s first execution date in 2012 was rescheduled because he was in the middle of federal litigation over his case.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, dismissed Cantu’s appeal without considering its merits four months after Smith paused the 2023 execution date. The court’s dismissal said that Cantu’s request for a hearing failed to meet the requirements necessary for a review but did not expand on why the Boettchers’ testimony should not be reconsidered.

“They didn’t give us a whole lot of information as to why we didn’t meet the standard,” Bunn said.

Texas has strict parameters for which subsequent appeals can be considered and the Court of Criminal Appeals interpreted that statute narrowly, Bunn said. Because federal courts only consider federal issues, and the state’s highest criminal court dismissed Cantu’s appeal on state law, last year’s rejection has made it difficult for the defendant to evade execution through federal litigation, she said.

Regardless, Cantu intends to pursue relief in federal courts as well. Additionally, he has until Feb. 14 to file further litigation with the highest criminal court in the state. His legal team filed a clemency application on Tuesday.

Cantu has also requested evidence and notes from the state’s ballistic expert who testified at trial that a bullet found in his apartment wall came from the same gun used in the murders. Along with a group of concerned experts, private investigator Matt Duff, who launched a podcast about Cantu’s case in 2020, recreated Cantu’s exterior wall where police found a bullet from the same gun they said was used to kill Mosqueda and Kitchen. Amy Boettcher testified that Ivan shot at her the night before the murders and a bullet had been lodged in the wall of his apartment.

The group carried out the re-creation to highlight discrepancies in a test bullet and the bullet submitted as evidence in Cantu’s trial, in an effort to highlight issues with the original investigation.

Stewart Fillmore, a former special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, noted in court filings that there were inconsistencies between the two bullets, including deformities caused by the impact and the size of the bullet hole in the wall.

The Collin County district court dismissed requests to release notes from the ballistic expert and related evidence.

Bunn, who spent over a decade working on capital cases on behalf of the state, also argues that Cantu’s former attorneys failed their client in numerous ways.

“They did not have a defense investigator,” Bunn said. “Even considering how capital representation was 20 years ago, still that blows my mind.”

Compared to the state’s medical examiner, ballistics, DNA, fingerprint and blood spatter experts, Cantu’s defense didn’t call on a single expert to refute prosecutors’ case, Bunn said.

Cantu’s trial took place before the passage of the Michael Morton Act, a Texas law which requires prosecutors to turn over evidence to defendants accused of crimes, beyond the constitutional requirement of providing what is “material either to guilt or to punishment.” Bunn noted that the Collins County district attorney’s office did not turn over all offense reports or witness statements until those individuals took the stand at trial.

Other powerful voices in Cantu’s corner are some of the jurors who put him on death row over two decades ago. At least three of the jurors in the capital case have pushed to halt his execution after hearing new details of his innocence claims presented in his appeals. Jeff Calhoun, the jury foreman in Cantu’s 2001 trial, wrote to the state after Duff, the private investigator, presented post trial evidence that convinced him Cantu’s case should be reconsidered.

“I believe that as jurors, we collectively decided fairly based on the evidence brought forth by the prosecutors,” wrote Calhoun in a declaration last month. “The unfortunate outcome, though is that the trial itself was not fair as perjury was committed. I don’t know where else the truth was fabricated, if anywhere, but this alone leaves me apprehensive that we were presented with the total truth.”

Cantu said his heart goes out to Mosqueda and Kitchen’s families, but he said the Collin County district attorney’s office has a responsibility to find the person who committed these murders.

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/08/texas-execution-ivan-cantu/