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Willie Trottie Texas Execution

Willie Trottie was executed by the State of Texas for a double murder. According to court documents Willie Trottie would go over to his estranged girlfriends home and shoot and kill her and her brother. Willie Trottie would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Willie Trottie would be executed by lethal injection on September 10 2014

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Willie Tyrone Trottie, condemned for the murder of his estranged wife and her brother, went to his death in Texas’ execution chamber Wednesday offering apologies to his victims’ family.

As relatives of Barbara Canada and Titus Canada embraced and sobbed, Trottie smiled faintly, called their names and said, “I hope this brings you some closure. Stay strong. I am going home to be with the Lord.

“Find it in your hearts to forgive me. I’m sorry,” he continued. “Jesus take me home.”

Willie Trottie, 45, was declared dead at 6:35 p.m. – 30 minutes after the lethal injection of pentobarbital began flowing.

Later, relatives of the victims issued a statement saying they were “glad to see justice finally served all these years later. It is time for our family to end this chapter and move on.”

Trottie’s case gained national attention earlier this year when he shared his views concerning his crime, death row and capital punishment with the online publication, gawker.com. In his letter, Trottie denounced his pending execution as a “murdercution.”

The former Houston security guard’s death sentence grew out a romantic relationship that ended on May 3, 1993 in a bloody shootout at the Canada family home. Trottie insisted that he had fired his 9 mm semi-automatic “in the heat of passion,” only after he had been wounded by shots fired by his estranged lover’s brother. Trottie said he had gone to the residence to borrow a car.

Accounts of the fatal night included in court documents, though, indicate Trottie’s appearance at the Canada home came after repeated threats that he would murder Barbara Canada if she failed to return to him. “Bitch, I told you I was going to kill you,” he said as he pumped 11 bullets into the 24-year-old woman’s body. Titus Canada, 29, was shot twice in the head, and the pair’s mother and sister also were wounded.

Trial witnesses testified that Trottie frequently telephoned his former lover at home and work and that, on one occasion, he bumped her car with his vehicle at highway speeds.

In response to the threats and harassment, Barbara Canada obtained a restraining order barring further contact.

In state and federal appeals filed days before the scheduled execution, Trottie’s lawyers argued that Canada ‑ mother of Trottie’s young son ‑ continued their intimate relationship despite the court order. Arguing that Trottie had suffered from ineffective representation, they said that jurors in their client’s first trial never heard such testimony ‑ testimony that might have lent credence to his claims of passion and self-defense.

Sixteen years passed, they told appeals courts, before prosecutors told Trottie’s legal team that a trial witness had privately conceded that Canada “probably had messed with (Trottie’s) mind.”

According to court documents, Trottie and Canada began dating in 1989, later living together in a common-law marriage. They separated three years later.

In an 11th-hour filing Tuesday with the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Trottie’s lawyers questioned whether state prison officials were truthful when they asserted pentobarbital to be used in the execution would remain potent and pure. Lawyers asked the court to issue a stay and schedule oral arguments concerning the compounding pharmacy-produced drug.

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Houston-man-executed-in-deaths-of-estranged-5746816.php

Jose Villegas Texas Execution

Jose Villegas was executed by the State of Texas for a triple murder. According to court documents Jose Villegas would stab to death his ex girlfriend, her mother and her three year old son. Jose Villegas would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Jose Villegas would be executed by lethal injection on April 17, 2014

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Jose Villegas, a man convicted of fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend, her 3-year-old son and her mother 13 years ago at a home in Corpus Christi was executed by Texas prison officials Wednesday.

The lethal injection of Villegas, 39, was carried out after his attorneys unsuccessfully argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that he was mentally impaired and ineligible for the death penalty.

“I would like to remind my children once again I love them,” Villegas said when asked if he had a statement before being put to death. “Everything is okay. I love you all, and I love my children. I am at peace.”

Just as the pentobarbital began taking effect, he said, “It does kind of burn. Goodbye.” He gasped several times, then started to breathe quietly. Within less than a minute, all movement had stopped.

Villegas was pronounced dead at 7:04 p.m., 11 minutes after the lethal dose of the sedative began. He became the seventh prisoner executed this year in the nation’s most active death penalty state.

Six relatives of his victims witnessed the execution but declined to comment afterward.

“I was struck by the calm and peacefulness inside that room as opposed to the utter terror the victims must have been in as Jose Luis Villegas stabbed them,” Mark Skurka, the Nueces County district attorney who prosecuted Villegas, said after watching the execution

He made no attempt to make peace with the family, apologize to the family or show any remorse for taking the lives of three people,” Skurka said. “The family expressed to me that they are glad that this is finally over and that justice has finally been done, even though it took a very long time in their minds for this to happen.”

Villegas’ lawyers filed a last-day appeal asking the Supreme Court to stop his punishment, saying testing in February showed he had an IQ of 59. The high court denied it several hours later, slightly delaying the punishment. Four of the nine justices indicated in the brief court order that they would have given him a reprieve.

The Supreme Court has prohibited execution of mentally impaired people, although states have been allowed to devise procedures to make their own determinations. Courts also have embraced scientific studies that consider a 70 IQ a threshold for impairment, and the high court justices are reviewing a Florida law stipulating that number for death penalty eligibility.

The Texas Attorney General’s office disputed the IQ finding, saying previous examinations of Villegas showed no mental impairment and the number cited in his appeal was based on testing after he received an execution date and had no incentive to do well on the test. State attorneys also argued his lawyers had 10 years to raise impairment claims but didn’t do so until days before his scheduled punishment.

Villegas was convicted of fatally stabbing Erida Salazar, 23, her 3-year-old son, Jacob, and Salazar’s mother, Alma Perez, 51, in January 2001. Their bodies were discovered by Salazar’s father when he returned home after being excused from jury duty. Each had been stabbed at least 19 times.

Villegas, a former cook, dishwasher and laborer, was free on bond for a sexual assault charge and was supposed to go on trial the day of the killings for an incident in which a woman said he punched her in the face.

Police spotted Villegas driving Salazar’s stolen car and he led them on a chase that ended with him on foot and urging officers to shoot him. When arresting him, police found three bags of cocaine in his baseball cap.

Following his conviction for capital murder, Villegas was convicted of two counts of indecency with a child related to the daughter of the woman he was accused of punching in the face prior to the slayings. Relatives have said Salazar’s mother had urged her daughter to break up with Villegas when she learned of the sex charges against him.

Villegas also had convictions for making terroristic threats to kill women, burglary and possessing inhalants.

Attorneys argued the slayings were not intentional and Villegas was mentally ill. A defense psychiatrist testified Villegas experienced “intermittent explosive disorder,” a condition that led to uncontrollable rages.

Villegas became the third Texas inmate executed with a new stock of pentobarbital from a provider corrections officials have refused to identify, citing the possibility of threats of violence against the supplier. The Supreme Court has upheld that stance.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-man-put-to-death-for-murdering-3-year-old-two-others/

Ramiro Hernandez Texas Execution

Ramiro Hernandez was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a man. According to court documents Ramiro Hernandez had escaped from a Mexican prison and made his way into the USA. Glen Lich hired him to do some work around his ranch. On the day of the murder Ramiro Hernandez would lure Glen Lich into a remote area and would beat the man to death before reentering the Lich home and attacking his wife. Ramiro Hernandez would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Ramiro Hernandez was executed by lethal injection on April 10 2014

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Ramiro Hernandez-Llanas, 44, was in the US illegally when he killed a former university professor who had hired him to help with renovations on his home.

The execution by lethal injection went ahead after Texas’ parole and pardons board refused to delay his case.

Hernandez-Llanas is the sixth Texas prisoner executed this year.

He was the second person this week to be executed in the state by lethal injection with a new supply of pentobarbital.

Earlier this week, a US appeals court rejected a bid by lawyers for Hernandez-Llanas and another death row inmate, Tommy Lynn Sells, to learn who is supplying Texas with the drug.

They argue they need to know the source to ensure the executions will not be botched.

But Texas officials have refused to identify the source of the sedative, saying secrecy is needed to protect the provider from threats of violence.

Hernandez-Llanas was pronounced dead at 18:28 local time (23:28 GMT) at the Texas state death chamber in Huntsville.

In a final statement, he asked forgiveness from the victim’s family and said he was at peace, the Associated Press news agency reports.

In 1997, Glen Lich, 49, hired Hernandez-Llanas to work for him to help renovate his ranch near the city of Kerrville.

Unbeknownst to Lich, Hernandez-Llanas had recently escaped from a Mexican prison where he was serving a 25-year sentence for a 1989 murder.

Several days later, Hernandez-Llanas lured Lich away from his house by telling him falsely there was a problem with a generator. He beat the man to death with a length of steel rebar, then entered the house and attacked Lich’s wife.

Sentenced in 2000 for Lich’s murder, he was among more than four dozen Mexican nationals awaiting execution in the US in 2004 when the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, ruled they had not been properly informed of their consular rights when arrested.

Another one of those Mexican nationals, Edgar Tamayo, 46, was executed by Texas in January despite objections of both the Mexican and US governments.

Euclides del Moral, a Mexico foreign ministry official, said on Tuesday “the execution of a Mexican national is of great concern”.

But the issue did not play a large part in Hernandez-Llanas’ appeals, which focused primarily on claims that his mental impairment made him ineligible for the death penalty.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-26964869

Tommy Lynn Sells Texas Execution

Tommy Lynn Sells who was a serial killer would be executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a thirteen year old girl. According to court documents Tommy Lynn Sells would murder 13 year old Katy Harris in her own bed. After he was arrested Tommy Lynn Sells would confess to dozens of murders and authorities would later tie him to seventeen murders. Tommy Lynn Sells would be executed by lethal injection on April 3, 2014

Tommy Lynn Sells More News

Convicted serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells, who was sent to prison in 1999 and claimed responsibility for dozens of murders across the country, was executed Thursday in Texas.

Sells, 49, was convicted of killing 13-year-old Katy Harris while she slept in her Del Rio, Texas, home. Her murder landed Sells on death row, but he has been linked to at least 17 other killings and claims he has killed as dozens more.

Sells declined to make final remarks before his death, then took a few breaths, closed his eyes and began to snore as the lethal-injection drugs took effect, The Associated Press reported. He soon stopped moving and was pronounced dead 13 minutes later at 6:27 p.m. CT.

Sells’ execution earlier had been halted when a district court ruled that the Texas prison system was required to disclose information about its lethal-injection drugs supplier and how the drugs are tested. But a federal appeals court on Wednesday threw out the ruling and reversed the decision.

Sells’ attorneys made a plea to the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the serial killer’s execution, but their plea was rejected Thursday.

In a statement to ABC News Thursday, Sells’ attorneys said, “It is our belief that how we choose to execute prisoners reflects on us as a society. Without transparency about lethal injections, particularly the source and purity of drugs to be used, it is impossible to ensure that executions are humane and constitutional. It is our hope that the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas courts will ultimately agree that we must have transparency about the execution process in order to ensure that prisoners are able to protect their Eighth Amendment rights.”

Sells was a subject in a 2010 special ABC News report entitled, “Nightline Prime: Secrets of Your Mind,” which followed the inner workings of the human brain and its effects on behavior. He was included in a segment about researchers studying the brain scans of murderers and psychopaths in hopes of discovering why someone would turn into a vicious killer.

Sells, an extreme example of someone with a murderous mind, talked about his gruesome past with ABC News in a chilling 2010 jailhouse interview.

As a young boy growing up in St. Louis, Sells was addicted to killing by the time he was 14.

“I am hatred. When you look at me, you look at hate,” Sells said in 2010. “I don’t know what love is. Two words I don’t like to use is ‘love’ and ‘sorry,’ because I’m about hate.”

His drifter lifestyle helped him elude police for nearly 15 years as his victims turned up from coast to coast. Sells said his drug use fueled his killing sprees.

“The first time I did a shot of dope, it was the best feeling I ever had in my life. The first time I killed somebody, it was such a rush,” Sells told ABC News at the time. “It was just like that, a shot of dope every time I did it, it was that rush again, and I started chasing that high.”

During the interview, Sells appeared nonchalant when asked about the victims he had slain, and spoke very matter-of-factly when recounting his killing methods: beatings, stabbings, strangling. He even raped many of his targets before slicing their throats.

“I like to watch the eyes fade, the pupil fade. It’s just like setting their soul free,” Sells said at the time, without showing emotion. “I don’t have an on-and-off switch. I’m just after that drug. I’m after that feeling.”

One of the more horrific crimes Sells has confessed to committing was the slaying of 30-year-old Eileen Dardeen and her family.

Dardeen was seven-and-a-half months pregnant when Sells allegedly beat her to death. During the attack, she went into premature labor and gave birth to a baby girl.

Investigators determined the newborn was alive when she was born, but was later found bludgeoned to death, as was Dardeen’s 3-year-old son.

Her husband’s body turned up a few days later. He had been shot three times in the head.

Investigators involved with the Dardeen case said if Sells were not already sitting on death row in Texas, they would have arrested him for this crime.

Sells blamed his murderous rage on having an abusive childhood.

“I didn’t want them to live through the pain I lived through,” Sells told ABC News, explaining why some of his victims had been children.

Sells has left only one known survivor during his terrifying rampage.

Krystal Surles was just 10 years old when Sells tried to murder her while she was sleeping over at her friend Katy Harris’ house in Del Rio, Texas.

Asleep on the top bunk, Surles awoke in the middle of the night to Sells killing her friend.

Though it happened years ago, Surles told ABC News in an interview that it was a night that will remain burned in her memory.

“He had a hand on her mouth and the knife on her neck, and she’s looking at me, at the bunk bed,” Surles told ABC News at the time. “He just cut her throat, and she fell to the ground.”

Frozen with fear, Surles said Sells then walked towards the door, about to shut off the light, when he looked around the room one last time.

“That’s the first time he noticed me,” she said. “He … didn’t hesitate at all. I mean, just shut the door, came right back towards me with the knife.”

“The only thing that he said is, ‘Move your hands’ … and he reached over the top bunk and … cut my neck.”

Sells severed Surles’ windpipe and grazed her ceratoid artery. She played dead on the floor in a pool of blood until she thought Sells had gone, then she ran for help at a neighbor’s house.

Surles later identified Sells as her attacker and as the man who had brutally killed her friend, which finally put an end to his killing spree. He was later found guilty.

Sells told ABC News in 2010 that he still remembered the one that got away.

“There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think of her,” he said at the time.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/convicted-serial-killer-tommy-lynn-sells-executed-texas/story?id=23184667

Anthony Doyle Texas Execution

Anthony Doyle was executed by the State of Texas for a robbery murder. According to court documents Anthony Doyle would make an order from a restaurant and when the delivery person showed up he would demand her money and when Hyun Cho replied she did not have any Anthony Doyle would fatally beat her with a baseball bat. Anthony Doyle would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Anthony Doyle would be executed by lethal injection on March 27, 2014.

Anthony Doyle More News

Texas executed convicted murderer Anthony Doyle on Thursday as it kept the pace of executions steady while other states have had to postpone capital punishments because they cannot obtain drugs used in lethal injections.

Doyle, 29, was convicted of beating food delivery woman Hyun Cho, a South Korean native, to death in 2003 with a baseball bat, putting her body in a trash can and stealing her car.

Doyle was pronounced dead at 6:49 p.m. CDT (2349 GMT) at the state’s death chamber in Huntsville after receiving a lethal injection. He did not make a last statement, a Department of Criminal Justice spokesman said.

Texas, which has executed more people than any other state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, has obtained a fresh batch of its execution drug pentobarbital, the Department of Criminal Justice said this month, without revealing the source.

On Thursday, a state judge ordered Texas to release the name of its new drug supplier. The state attorney general’s office said it would appeal the ruling.

The decision was for two inmates due to be executed in April and had no impact on Doyle’s execution.

Many other U.S. states have been struggling to obtain drugs for executions after pharmaceutical firms, mostly in Europe, imposed sales bans because they object to having medications used in lethal injections.

Oklahoma has had to postpone two executions planned for this month because it could not find drugs. Alabama said this week it has run out of one of the main drugs it uses, putting on hold executions for 16 inmates who have exhausted appeals and face capital punishment.

Several states have looked to alter the chemicals used for lethal injection and keep the suppliers’ identities secret. They have also turned to lightly regulated compounding pharmacies that can mix chemicals.

But an Oklahoma judge ruled on Wednesday that the state’s secrecy on its lethal injections protocols was unconstitutional, a decision that could delay executions in other states where death row inmates are planning to launch similar challenges.

Texas plans to execute five more inmates between now and the end of May, about the same number as every other state combined for the period, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit organization which monitors capital punishment.

Doyle was the fourth person executed in Texas this year and the 512th in the state since the death penalty was reinstated.

But executions overall have been on the decline in Texas, after hitting a peak of 40 in 2000. Since 2010, Texas has averaged about 15 executions a year.

The high costs of prosecutions and the availability of a sentence of life without parole have caused capital punishment convictions to fall to about 10 or less a year in recent years.

“We are now very selective in what we choose to go after as death penalty cases, instead of deciding that every single murder that we try will be a capital case,” said Susan Reed, the district attorney in San Antonio and a death penalty supporter.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-execution-texas-doyle-idUSBREA2R00R20140328