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Richard Masterson Texas Execution

Richard Masterson was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a woman. According to court documents Richard Masterson picked up the victim Darin Honeycutt in 2001. Darin Honeycutt would be strangled to death. Richard Masterson first confessed to the murder but later would say that the strangulation was accidental during sex. The jury would convict Richard Masterson and sentenced him to death. Richard Masterson was executed by lethal injection on January 20 2016

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In Texas’ first execution of 2016, a man convicted in a fatal strangling and robbery was executed in Huntsville Wednesday night.

Richard Masterson, 43, was declared dead at 6:53 p.m. from a lethal injection of pentobarbital, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He was sentenced to death for the 2001 strangulation of Darin Honeycutt in Harris County, and served almost 14 years on death row.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court both denied last-minute requests for stays of execution Wednesday.

“Sending me to a better place. I am alright with this,” Masterson said in his final words. “You have to live and die by the choices that we make. I have made mine.”

Masterson met Honeycutt at a bar, and the two left together early on Jan. 26, 2001. Honeycutt’s body was found in his apartment the next day, and his car was gone, according to court documents.

Masterson was arrested Feb. 6 in Florida. He originally confessed to intentionally killing Honeycutt but later claimed that the death was accidental, saying Honeycutt had asked to be choked while they were having sex.

The medical examiner in the case testified during the trial that the death was caused by intentional strangulation, and the jury found Masterson guilty and sentenced him to death in May 2002.

The day before Masterson’s execution date, his lawyers filed last-minute requests for stays and new hearings in the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, after already having received several denials.

In their latest appeal at the state level, Masterson’s lawyers asked for a new hearing to challenge the constitutionality of a statute that allows the state to keep execution drug manufacturers secret. The Court of Criminal Appeals denied the request Wednesday morning.

In an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, attorney Gregory Gardner said that Honeycutt died of a heart attack after having sex with Masterson. Gardner said that Paul Shrode, the medical examiner, wrongly classified the death as a homicide.

In the same year as Honeycutt’s death, Shrode was written up by the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office for wrongly determining a cause of death. In 2010, he was fired from his position as El Paso County chief medical examiner after a death row inmate in Ohio was granted clemency due to issues related to Shrode’s testimony in the case.

These incidents and the fact that the state did not reveal them to Masterson, Gardner argued, was cause for a stay and hearing. The request was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday afternoon, allowing the execution to move forward.

“Richard was an innocent man,” Gardner said. “If [he] was not poor, he could have afforded attorneys who would have handled his case properly. He would be free today.”

The execution was the first of nine scheduled for the first six months of the year, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, with the second scheduled for James Freeman next Wednesday. Thirteen men were put to death by the state of Texas in 2015.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/01/20/richard-masterson-set-be-first-2016-texas-executio/

Ruben Cardenas Texas Execution

Ruben Cardenas was executed by the state of Texas for the sexual assault and murder of his sixteen year old cousin. According to court documents Ruben Cardenas would sneak through a window and abduct sixteen year old Mayra Laguna. The teen would be sexually assaulted and murdered. Ruben Cardenas would deny that he was responsible for the brutal crime. Ruben who is a Mexican Nationalist tried to get his sentence commuted to life due a treaty between the USA and Mexico however he would be executed by lethal injection on November 8, 2017

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Amid international outcry and claims of global treaty violations, Texas on Wednesday executed a Mexican national who has long professed his innocence in the rape and murder of his 16-year-old cousin in the Rio Grande Valley 20 year ago.

Ruben Cardenas Ramirez thanked his lawyers and declared his innocence one last time before he was pronounced dead at 10:26 p.m

“I love you all very much. And I know that you love me too. Life does go on,” he told his family in a written statement just before his execution.

“I will not and cannot apologize for someone else’s crime, but, I will be back for justice! You can count on that.”

In the days before the 47-year-old’s death, Mexican officials held press conferences in Mexico City and Houston, decrying the execution they said followed from flagrant disregard for international law. Amnesty International, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations all condemned the state’s use of its harshest punishment.

“I am extraordinarily disappointed with this outcome and at the same time overcome with pride at the efforts made by his lawyer, Maurie Levin, and her team of lawyers,” said Gregory Kuykendall, an Arizona attorney authorized to speak on behalf of Mexico. “And I’m equally proud of the Mexican government for so diligently pursuing every avenue of defense conceivable.”

But for the victim’s family, Wednesday’s outcome was a final relief. The slain teen’s sister – who witnessed her abduction 20 years earlier – declared “justice was finally served,” and reminisced over the murdered girl’s smile and loving nature.

Police first zeroed in on the Guanajuato native as the prime suspect in the shocking crime just hours after Mayra Laguna’s disappearance on Feb. 22, 1997. Roxanna Laguna later said she had spotted a man slipping in through the window and snatching her older sister from the bed they shared.

When authorities pulled in Cardenas and his buddy Tony Castillo for questioning, at first they only admitted to a wild night out, filled with booze and cocaine. But after hours of interrogation, they confessed to the killing.

Later, prosecutors say, Cardenas led investigators to Mayra’s body, tossed in a canal off the beaten path.

“This guy is guilty as sin,” Hidalgo County prosecutor Ted Hake reaffirmed in the weeks before the execution.

But defense counsel alleged that the multiple confessions were coerced and said police led Cardenas to the dump site and not the other way around.

Aside from raising questions about the evidence, lawyers for Cardenas and representatives of Mexico have harped on alleged violations of a consular treaty and a World Court ruling.

When authorities in Hidalgo County first arrested Cardenas they did not immediately tell Mexico or notify the accused of his right to talk to his country’s consulate, according to court documents — an apparent oversight that violates Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

A 2004 U.N. World Court ruling mandates that foreign nationals who weren’t told of their consular rights are allowed a review to examine whether that oversight influenced the outcome of the criminal case.

Yet it was because of the lack of consular notification that Mexican officials didn’t find out about the arrest for five months – long after Cardenas had given multiple, conflicting confessions that his lawyer argues were coerced.

Cardenas repeatedly asked for a lawyer, but authorities ignored his pleas until 11 days after his arrest, instead pushing on in their interrogations without telling him about his consular notification rights, his attorney alleged in court filings.

But a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision deemed the U.N. order unenforceable unless Congress takes legislative action — and it hasn’t.

Wednesday’s planned execution would be the fifth time Texas put to death a Mexican national in apparent violation of international law, officials said Tuesday.

Cardenas spent his final days pecking away at his typewriter and visiting with family, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice records. On Wednesday he refused breakfast and was transferred to the death chamber in Huntsville.

Meanwhile, in a flurry of last-minute filings, Cardenas’ lawyers struggled in a futile bid to save his life.

On Monday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals slapped down a pair of appellate claims seeking DNA testing, calling the request a possible stall tactic that wouldn’t be enough to prove innocence anyway.

Then on Tuesday, defense attorney Levin filed a civil suit targeting prison officials she says refused to let her watch the execution. Citing previous botched lethal injections in other states, Levin argued for the need for phone access during and before the punishment.

Federal courts denied the claim on Wednesday, along with a suit demanding DNA testing in the case. Within hours, the Fifth Circuit denied the latter claim on appeal.

Carrying out the execution without more testing “violates the most basic notions of fairness and justice,” Levin said.

The Hidalgo County District Attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

With hours to go before Cardenas went to the death chamber, his counsel filed two appeals begging the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution. The court denied both just before 10 p.m.

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Supreme-Court-allows-execution-of-Mexican-12343362.php

TaiChin Preyor Texas Execution

TaiChin Preyor was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a man during a robbery. According to court documents TaiChin Preyor would stab to death Jami Tackett during a drug deal gone bad. TaiChin Preyor attempted to get his death sentence overturned due to his lawyers using Wikipedia and relying on a disbarred lawyer to fight his case. TaiChin Preyor would be executed by lethal injection on July 27 2017

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The state of Texas executed TaiChin Preyor on Thursday night after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a last-minute appeal.

Preyor, 46, was put to death by lethal injection at a state corrections unit in Huntsville in the fatal stabbing of Jami Tackett during a drug-related robbery in 2004, The Associated Press reported. He claimed he acted in self-defense but was convicted of capital murder.

Preyor had argued that a previous attorney collaborated with a disbarred lawyer, relied on Wikipedia and double-billed his family and the court.

The attorney who handled Preyor’s initial appeal was a real-estate specialist from Beverly Hills, Calif., who partnered with a man who had been disbarred for incompetence 15 years earlier — without informing the court, Preyor said in his latest motions.

“The federal habeas petition the duo filed in the District Court was so facially inadequate that it subsequently became its own ironic meme, circulated among habeas attorneys as an example of what not to do,” Preyor’s eleventh-hour appeal argued.

The California attorney had never appeared in a case in Texas state court, and a 2014 printout in her files showed that she did not do research about the death penalty in Texas until it was too late.

“It appears she relied on Wikpedia, of all things, to learn the complex ins and outs of Texas capital-punishment law,” the motion reads.

“Her files included a copy of the Wikipedia page titled, ‘Capital punishment in Texas,’ with a post-it note stating ‘Research’ next to highlighted passages of ‘habeas corpus appeals’ and ‘subsequent or successive writ applications.'”

Preyor’s mother paid the duo $45,000 for their services, but the lawyer also billed the court for representing Preyor, the motion said.

“Preyor cannot be bound by the acts of two incompetent charlatans,” the new lawyers wrote in their Supreme Court petition. The previous attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

In its response to Preyor’s appeal, the state said the inmate failed to show that what his ex-lawyer did “amounts to fraud on the court.” The state also said Preyor had waited too long to make his claim, which was filed two weeks before his execution.

In another brief, the state said Preyor’s appeal “highlights a disturbing pattern of behavior he has exhibited for years: obtaining counsel, becoming dissatisfied with counsel’s performance, and acquiring new counsel who then complains about former counsel’s representation.”

Asked by the prison warden Thursday night whether he had a final statement, Preyor replied: “First and foremost, I’d like to say: Justice has never advanced by taking a human life,” according to the AP. Then he said he would love his wife and children “forever and always.”

“That’s it,” Preyor said.

As the lethal dose of pentobarbital began taking effect, he took several deep breaths, then began snoring, each sound decreasing in volume. Within a minute, all movement stopped.

He was pronounced dead 19 minutes later

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/taichin-preyor-tries-stop-execution-says-lawyer-used-wikipedia-n787106

James Bigby Texas Execution

James Bigby was executed by the State of Texas for a double murder which included the death of a four month old infant. According to court documents James Bigby would fatally shoot Michael Trekell, 26, and Trekell’s infant son, Jayson Kehler, as Bigby believed Trekell was undermining a workers compensation lawsuit. James Bigby was also a suspect in two other murders but was never charged. James Bigby would be executed by lethal injection in March 14, 2017

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After nearly 26 years on Texas’ death row and two sentencing trials, a man convicted in the death of his friend and a 4-month-old during a Fort Worth killing spree was executed Tuesday evening.

James Bigby, a 61-year-old with a history of paranoid schizophrenia, was convicted in the 1987 murders of Michael Trekell, 26, and Trekell’s infant son, Jayson Kehler, according to court filings. Bigby was also accused of killing Calvin Crane and Frank Johnson, but he wasn’t tried in those murders.

Bigby told police he killed the men because he believed they were conspiring with his employer to undermine a worker’s compensation case he had filed. He said he didn’t know why he killed the baby.

Just after 6 p.m. Tuesday, Bigby lay on the gurney in Texas’ execution chamber in Huntsville. He was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 6:17 p.m. and pronounced dead 14 minutes later, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He had no witnesses there on his behalf.

In his final statement, Bigby apologized to Grace Kehler, the mother of the infant he killed, and the families of Crane and Johnson.

“I’m sorry it went on for a terribly long time … I hope that my death will bring you peace and closure,” he said. “… I hope that you could forgive me, but if you don’t I understand. I don’t think I could forgive anyone who would of killed my children.”

Aside from his statement, Bigby also wrote a letter to Kehler, apologizing again, telling her he tried to drop his appeals earlier, and blaming his old employer, Frito-Lay, for his actions.

“Frito Lay caused my actions and they alone are to blame for what I did and it was not about money … attempts to kill me followed when I refused to settle or drop my legal suit,” he wrote.

Bigby had not filed any late appeals before his execution, and, even though he had been on death row for more than a quarter of a century, Tuesday was the first execution date he received, according to his lawyer, John Stickels.

“I believe that [Bigby] is resigned to the fact that he’s going to be executed, and I think he wants it over with,” Stickels told The Texas Tribune on Friday.

The killing spree started on the evening of Dec. 23, 1987, when Bigby and Trekell were watching television and making dinner, according to court filings. Bigby shot Trekell and attempted to suffocate 4-month-old Jayson with cellophane before drowning him in the sink.

Later that night, he visited Crane, another friend. Bigby convinced Crane to drive around to investigate whether Bigby was being followed. In the car, Bigby told Crane to pull over, and he shot him and left him dead on the road, according to an opinion from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Then, around 3 a.m. on Christmas Eve, the opinion said, he drove Crane’s car to Johnson’s house and shot him several times when he opened the door.

He was arrested two days later after a SWAT standoff at a local motel. The mother of the infant, Grace Kehler, told police she knew Bigby had been hospitalized for mental illness more than once and that he had said before he wanted to go out “in a blaze of glory,” according to court documents.

During his trial, an insanity defense was shot down, and, at one point during a recess, Bigby got a hold of a gun Judge Don Leonard kept at his bench, went into Leonard’s chambers and tried to take him hostage in an apparent escape attempt, court records said. Bigby was eventually subdued, and Leonard continued to preside over the trial.

“There’s a lot of things about this case that, over time, made the news and made this a big case,” said Helena Faulkner, Tarrant County assistant district attorney who has handled the Bigby case after his conviction.

Bigby spent a long time on death row because he was granted a new sentencing trial in 2005. The U.S 5th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out his original death sentence because new sentencing procedures required juries to decide whether any mitigating evidence – like Bigby’s mental illness – qualified a capital murder convict for the lesser sentence of life without parole. When Bigby was first sentenced to death in 1991, jurors were told they could “nullify” any such evidence.

During his original trial, the defense brought up Bigby’s schizophrenia, telling the jury that he had various diagnoses and been hospitalized multiple times. A psychiatrist testified that “at the time of the offense … Bigby was suffering from [this] serious severe mental illness and was not aware of the difference between right and wrong.”

Still, after considering this evidence during the second trial, the jury again handed down a death sentence, essentially resetting the appeals process after Bigby had already lived 15 years on death row.

Under current law, mentally ill convicts can be sentenced to death (though at least one Texas lawmaker is hoping to change that). Defendants can present the illness as mitigating evidence, but ultimately, it is in the jurors’ hands. In Bigby’s case, the jury did not believe his schizophrenia was a reason to give him life without parole instead.

“Mr. Bigby was never found to be insane,” said Faulkner. “The jury rejected any claims that he had any type of mental illness or defect that would warrant not imposing a sentence of death.”

Bigby’s execution was the second from Tarrant County this year. The next two executions scheduled are also from Tarrant. Faulkner said the uptick in scheduled executions is because cases were delayed while the county did a review of capital cases and DNA analysis.

The execution was the fourth for Texas in 2017. Last week, the state put to death Rolando Ruiz after hours of uncertainty while the U.S. Supreme Court pondered pending appeals. Outside of Texas, only Virginia and Missouri have held executions this year — one in each of those states.

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/03/14/fort-worth-man-set-death-killing-spree-included-infant/

Rolando Ruiz Texas Execution

Rolando Ruiz was executed by the State of Texas for a murder for hire. According to court documents Rolando Ruiz was paid to murder Theresa Rodriguez. Theresa Rodriguez was leaving a car when she was fatally shot by Rolando Ruiz in a crime paid for by her husband and brother in law. Rolando Ruiz would be executed by lethal injection on March 8, 2017

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A paid hit man was executed Tuesday night in Texas for gunning down a San Antonio woman in a life insurance scheme nearly a quarter-century ago.

Rolando Ruiz was given a lethal injection for fatally shooting Theresa Rodriguez, 29, outside her home in 1992 as she was getting out of a car with her husband and brother-in-law, who both orchestrated her murder. Ruiz was paid $2,000 to carry out the killing.

Ruiz, strapped to the Texas death chamber gurney, looked directly at two sisters of his victim and their husbands and apologized profusely.

“Words cannot begin to express how sorry I am and the hurt I have caused you and your family,” he told them as they looked through a window a few feet from him. “May this bring you peace and forgiveness.”

He also thanked his own family for their love and support.

“I am at peace,” he said. “Jesus Christ is Lord. I love you all.”

As the lethal dose of pentobarbital was administered, he took several deep breaths, then began snoring quietly. All movement stopped within about 30 seconds.

Ruiz, 44, was pronounced dead 29 minutes later at 11:06 p.m.

His execution was the third this year in Texas and the fifth nationally.

“It’s not going to bring her back, so it really doesn’t mean very much,” Susie Sanchez, whose daughter was killed in the contract murder, said Monday. Her daughters, who were among the witnesses Tuesday night, declined to comment afterward.

The execution was delayed for nearly five hours until the U.S. Supreme Court rejected three appeals attorneys had filed for Ruiz to try to stop the punishment

His lawyers argued to the high court that lower courts improperly rejected an earlier appeal that focused on whether Ruiz earlier had deficient legal help. They also contended Ruiz’s execution would be unconstitutionally cruel because he’s been on death row since 1995, had multiple execution dates and two reprieves. Attorney Lee Kovarsky blamed the long time between a San Antonio jury’s verdict and the punishment on the state’s failure to provide Ruiz with competent lawyers earlier in his appeals.

Justice Stephen Breyer said he would have stopped the execution to further examine the question of prolonged death row confinement.

Assistant Texas Attorney General Edward Marshall had disputed the claims, telling the high court arguments about earlier deficient legal help “have been inspected, scrutinized, studied, probed, analyzed, reviewed and evaluated” at all levels of the federal courts. While some individual Supreme Court justices, like Breyer, have raised questions about long death row confinement, the courts consistently have ruled it was not unconstitutionally cruel.

Ruiz approached a car pulling up to Rodriguez’s home the night of July 14, 1992, under the guise of seeking directions. Her husband of nearly seven years, Michael, was in the car along with Michael’s brother, Mark. Ruiz, who already had pocketed $1,000 and had failed in two earlier killing attempts, asked Mark Rodriguez if he wanted him to “do it,” and Rodriguez gave him the go-ahead. As Theresa Rodriguez was getting out of the car, Ruiz put a .357 Magnum revolver to her head and fired. Three days later, Ruiz collected another $1,000 for the completed job.

Evidence showed Michael Rodriguez stood to collect at least a quarter-million dollars in insurance benefits from his wife’s death and that he’d recently applied for another $150,000 in life insurance for her.

Ruiz had met Mark Rodriguez at the home of a mutual friend, was arrested nine days after the shooting and implicated the brothers. The police investigation was aided by a telephone tip after Theresa Rodriguez’s employer, the San Antonio-based financial services giant USAA, offered a $50,000 reward for information about her slaying.

The Rodriguez brothers eventually accepted life prison terms in plea deals. Mark Rodriguez was paroled in 2011.

Michael Rodriguez later joined Ruiz on death row as one of the notorious Texas 7, a group of seven inmates who escaped from a South Texas prison in 2000 and killed a Dallas-area police officer. He was executed in 2008. He blamed his infatuation with a younger woman for the contract murder plot.

Joe Ramon, who accompanied Ruiz the night of the shooting, and Robert Silva, identified as the intermediary who put the Rodriguez brothers in touch with Ruiz, also received life prison sentences.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rolando-ruiz-remorseful-hit-man-in-texas-murder-for-hire-slaying-is-executed/