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Terry Edwards Texas Execution

Terry Edwards was executed by the State of Texas for a murder committed during a robbery. According to court documents Terry Edwards would shoot and kill Mickell Goodwin, 26, and Tommy Walker, 34 during a robbery of a Subway restaurant. Terry Edwards would be executed by lethal injection on January 26, 2017.

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Attorneys for Texas death row inmate Terry Edwards are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his scheduled execution Thursday for a fatal robbery more than 14 years ago at a Dallas-area Subway sandwich shop.

Evidence showed Edwards worked at the restaurant but was fired a few weeks earlier for stealing from the cash register. An employee and the store manager were killed in the $3,000 holdup in Balch Springs, about 15 miles southeast of downtown Dallas.

Edwards, 43, would be the second prisoner executed this year in Texas, the third nationally.

Edwards’ lawyers contended Dallas County prosecutors at his trial incorrectly portrayed Edwards as the shooter and that he was innocent of the shootings. They also said that the trial of Edwards, who is black, improperly excluded black people from the jury. And they accused prosecutors of manipulating evidence and testimony.

Finally, they said Edwards received deficient legal help at both his trial and in earlier appeals.

The execution should be stopped and the case reopened for a “full and fair” hearing, attorney Carl Medders told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The court rejected that appeal late Wednesday, saying the facts did not support Edwards’ arguments, that Edwards’ previous attorney “missed no deadlines and filed substantive arguments.”

John Mills, another lawyer on Edwards’ legal team, said attorneys would take their case to the Supreme Court.

State attorneys argued Edwards’ appeals improperly raised new claims, were too late under filing deadlines and had insufficient evidence to support their claims.

“Edwards could not hire experts to overcome the fact that he was found with the murder weapon and the money from the robbery,” Ellen Stewart-Klein, an assistant Texas Attorney General, said in a court brief. “Expert testimony could not have changed the evidence that the victims were shot from point-blank range. And expert testimony could not undo the statements Edwards made confessing upon arrest.”

An audio recording in the police car caught Edwards saying he had messed up “big time,” and talking about two murders.

In a separate appeal, other lawyers asked the Supreme Court to halt Edwards’ punishment until the court resolves an appeal that seeks to require Texas prison officials test the pentobarbital they use for lethal injections to ensure its potency and sterility. Edwards is among several Texas death row inmates who argue the testing is needed to make certain the drug made by an unidentified compounding pharmacy doesn’t cause unconstitutional pain and suffering.

Edwards admitted being in the Subway store shortly after it opened July 8, 2002, but told police a man he knew as “T-Bone” gave him the gun and did the shootings. Investigators later determined the other man he claimed to not know by name was his cousin.

Edwards was on parole at the time of the shootings. He’d been released in October 1999 after prison time for car theft and possession with intent to deliver cocaine.

Mickell Goodwin, 26, and Tommy Walker, 34, were each shot in the head in the holdup. Walker, the store manager, had seven children and stepchildren. Goodwin was mother of two daughters.

The second man involved, Edwards’ cousin, Kirk Edwards, turned himself in to police a day after the shootings. He had a previous criminal record for burglary and theft and now is serving 25 years for aggravated robbery for the sandwich shop case.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/terry-edwards-texas-convict-in-subway-shop-slayings-scheduled-for-execution/

Christopher Wilkins Texas Execution

Christopher Wilkins was executed by the State of Texas for a double murder in 2005. According to court documents Christopher Wilkins was released from prison early in 2005 and months later would shoot and kill tow men, Willie Freeman and Mike Silva over a drug debt. Christopher Wilkins was executed by lethal injection on January 11, 2017

Christopher Wilkins More News

Texas on Wednesday put to death an inmate convicted of killing two men over a drug deal, the first U.S. execution of 2017.

Christopher Wilkins, 48, was declared dead at 6:29 p.m., 13 minutes after a lethal injection of pentobarbital.

Before the drug was administered, he twice mouthed “I’m sorry,” to two relatives of one of the murder victims as they watched through a window. He gave no final statement.

Wilkins had explained to jurors at his capital murder trial in 2008 how and why he killed his friends in Fort Worth three years earlier, saying he didn’t care if they sentenced him to death.

Wilkins was released from prison in 2005 after serving time for a federal gun possession conviction. He drove a stolen truck to Fort Worth, where he befriended Willie Freeman, 40, and Mike Silva, 33.

Court records show Freeman and his drug supplier, who wasn’t identified, duped Wilkins into paying $20 for a piece of gravel that he thought was a rock of crack cocaine. Wilkins said he shot Freeman on Oct. 28, 2005, after Freeman laughed about the scam, then he shot Silva because he was there. Wilkins’ fingerprints were found in Silva’s wrecked SUV and a pentagram matching one of Wilkins’ numerous tattoos had been carved into the hood.

Wilkins also testified that the day before the shootings, he shot and killed another man, Gilbert Vallejo, 47, outside a Fort Worth bar in a dispute over a pay phone, and about a week later used a stolen car to try to run down two people because he believed one of them had taken his sunglasses.

“I know they are bad decisions,” Wilkins told jurors of his actions. “I make them anyway.”

Wes Ball, one of Wilkins’ trial lawyers, described him as “candid to a degree you don’t see,” and had hoped his appearance on the witness stand would have made jurors like him.

“It didn’t work,” Ball said.

While awaiting trial, authorities discovered he had swallowed a handcuff key and fashioned a knife to be used in an escape attempt.

“This guy is the classic outlaw in the model of Billy the Kid, an Old West-style outlaw,” said Kevin Rousseau, the Tarrant County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Wilkins.

Twenty convicted killers were executed in the U.S. last year, the lowest number since the early 1980s. That tally includes seven executions in Texas — the fewest in the state since 1996. Wilkins is among nine Texas inmates already scheduled to die in the early months of 2017.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/01/11/texas-execution-christopher-wilkins/96470784/

Alvin Braziel Texas Execution

Alvin Braziel was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a man recently married. According to court documents the victim, Douglas White , was walking with his wife when he was approached by Alvin Braziel who demanded money before shooting White dead. Alvin Braziel would be executed by lethal injection on December 12, 2018

Alvin Braziel More News

A Texas inmate was executed Tuesday evening for fatally shooting a newlywed during a robbery more than 25 years ago.

Alvin Braziel Jr., 43, received lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the 1993 slaying of 27-year-old Douglas White, who was attacked as he and his wife walked on a jogging trail.

Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Braziel thanked supporters and apologized to the victim’s wife, Lora White.

“I would like to apologize … for her husband dying at my hands,” Braziel said from the death chamber gurney. He also said he loved the White family and a person he named but who was not present, then told the warden he was finished.

As the sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, he took a couple of breaths, gasped, then snored loudly three times. The fourth snore was noticeably less pronounced, and then all movement stopped.

Braziel was pronounced dead 7:19 p.m., nine minutes after the drug began.

Braziel became the 24th inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the 13th executed in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. He will be the last Texas inmate executed this year.

The execution was delayed about an hour after the six-hour window defined by the warrant began at 6 p.m. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected a last-minute appeal from Braziel’s attorneys.

A brother of Douglas White and two friends attended the execution but declined to speak afterward. Braziel selected no one to witness his death.

In 1993, as Douglas and Lora White walked along a community college jogging trail in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Braziel jumped out from behind some bushes with a pistol in his hand and demanded money.

The Whites, who had only been married 10 days, didn’t have any money on them but told Braziel they could get him some and they started walking back to their truck. But Braziel became angry with the couple and ordered them to the ground.

“Doug … was praying, asked God to forgive him and Lora their sins because they both knew that this was it,” said Michael Bradshaw, the lead detective on the case for Mesquite police. “The last thing Doug said before Braziel fired the first round, he said, ‘Please God, don’t let him hurt Lora.'”

Braziel shot White once in the head and once in his heart.

Bradshaw said he believes Braziel would have also shot then-24-year-old Lora White but his gun malfunctioned. Braziel instead took her to bushy area near the trail and sexually assaulted her.

Douglas White’s murder was featured on the television show “America’s Most Wanted” and a $20,000 reward was raised by the chiropractic college he had worked for as an electrician. Bradshaw said more than 40 potential suspects were interrogated and had their blood drawn for testing.

But White’s murder remained unsolved for over seven years.

“I really didn’t know that I would ever be able to solve it. But I really did not give up hope,” said Bradshaw, 63, who retired from Mesquite police in 2012.

Braziel was eventually tied to the killing in 2001 after he was imprisoned for sexual assault in an unrelated case and his DNA matched evidence from Lora White’s assault.

At his trial, Braziel said he wasn’t near the college during the killing.

Braziel’s attorneys didn’t immediately reply to emails and calls seeking comment on Tuesday.

Last week, his lawyers asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stop his execution, arguing in part he should not receive lethal injection because he is intellectually disabled.

The Supreme Court held in 2002 that people convicted of murder who are intellectually disabled cannot be executed.

Braziel’s attorneys later withdrew their request.

Courts had previously turned down Braziel’s appeals that have focused on claims of mental illness and that he had suffered a childhood brain injury, saying Braziel refused to be examined by a mental health expert during his trial and that his family declined to help his defense attorneys obtain evidence of any mental health problems in Braziel’s family.

His attorneys also filed a last-minute appeal Tuesday, arguing that an emotional outburst at the 2001 murder trial from Lora White was unfairly elicited by prosecutors when she was shown on the witness stand a photo of her husband’s autopsied body.

Bradshaw said he still keeps in contact with Lora White and that she started a new life and is doing well.

“Lora wants it known that she’s prayed for Alvin Braziel and his family,” Bradshaw said.

https://abc13.com/alvin-braziel-texas-execution-douglas-white-mesquite/4878352/

Robert Ramos Texas Execution

Robert Ramos was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of his family. According to court documents Robert Ramos would beat to death his wife and two young children with a sledgehammer. Due to Robert Ramos being a Mexican National his execution went through a number of unusual hurdles before it was carried out by lethal injection on November 18, 2018

Robert Ramos More News

Texas executed Robert Moreno Ramos by lethal injection on Wednesday evening, amid his lawyers’ continued pleas up until the final hour that the case be re-examined for legal violations from 25 years ago.

Ramos, 64, was convicted of capital murder in March 1993 for the February 1992 killings of his wife, Leticia, 42, and their two children, Abigail, 7, and Jonathon, 3, in Hidalgo County. Ramos, a Mexican national, beat his wife and children with a miniature sledgehammer, and then buried them under the bathroom floor in the family’s Progreso home, according to trial evidence.

Ramos’ case had been a point of contention in both district and federal courts for years, due to requirements of an international treaty. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations mandates that when an immigrant is arrested and held in detention, he has the right for the consulate to be notified so that the foreign government can provide legal representation.

Lawyers in Ramos’ case had argued in appeals since 1996 that Ramos wasn’t aware of his rights, and therefore didn’t receive sufficient legal guidance that they say could have made a difference in his sentencing.

His current lawyer, Danalynn Recer, wrote in a 2015 filing that Ramos was instead represented by court-appointed, “incompetent counsel” who was poorly trained and failed to present “mitigating evidence” at his conviction and sentencing relating to Ramos’ brain damage and history of severe mental illness, including bipolar disorder, as well as his upbringing marked by “shocking brutality and desperate poverty.”

On Feb. 7, 1992, a neighbor reported that she had heard screams coming from the Ramos home. For nearly two months after the murders, Ramos dodged questions regarding his wife and children’s location, until his sister-in-law reported Leticia Ramos and the children as missing. In court records, it is noted that Ramos was having an affair and had married the woman three days after the killings.

Police questioned Ramos at the end of March about his family’s disappearance. After providing contradictory statements — saying first that his family was in Austin, then San Antonio and Mexico — Ramos was later arrested on traffic violations and brought to the police station.

Police obtained permission to search the house on April 6. They found traces of blood throughout the home. After another round of questioning on April 7, Ramos admitted that he buried the victims under the bathroom floor, where police eventually excavated the bodies from underneath newly installed tiling.

During Ramos’ sentencing, his 19-year-old son testified against him, detailing harrowing accounts of growing up under his father’s physical and verbal abuse. Another woman testified that Ramos was likely responsible for the disappearance of her daughter, who married Ramos in 1988 in Reynosa and who had not been seen by her family since 1989.

Ramos was found guilty and sentenced to death in March 1993.

The Mexican government eventually filed a case against the United States in 2003 that bundled Ramos with more than 50 other Mexican immigrants sentenced to death in the U.S. who did not receive consulate-sponsored representation under the treaty. The case went to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which determined in 2004 that the U.S. government had violated the treaty.

However, after the decision, President George W. Bush announced that it would be up to the state courts to “review and reconsider” details of the cases. Ramos sought relief under the international court’s ruling, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed his appeal, and the Supreme Court denied a review of the decision.

In a statement released Tuesday, the United Nations called for a halt to Ramos’ execution based on the treaty violations.

“Any death sentence carried out in contravention of a Government’s international obligations amounts to an arbitrary execution,” the U.N. statement read. “We call for his death sentence to be annulled and for Mr. Ramos Moreno to be re-tried in compliance with due process and international fair trial standards.”

In an early Wednesday press release, Recer — Ramos’ Houston-based attorney — reiterated that the case is an example of a “freakishly improbable injustice,” building on a filing from last week arguing that Ramos will “die without having received even one full and fair review of the constitutionality of his death sentence at any stage of the process in any state or federal court.”

Recer filed a last-minute plea for a stay of execution to the U.S. Supreme Court in the hours leading up to the execution scheduled for 6 p.m. Central time. The plea was denied shortly before 9 p.m.

Ramos gave a final statement before being pronounced dead at 9:36 p.m

“I am very thankful for all the hard work the Mexican consulate put in a fight over my death sentence if there was a reason or not. I am thankful for the humane treatment that I was given here at the two prisons that I was at. I am getting my gold watch that it took the Governor 30 years to forge. Thank you God, Lord send me a chariot. I’m ready.”

Ramos was the state’s 11th execution in 2018, the nation’s 21s

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/11/14/texas-execution-robert-moreno-ramos-lethal-injection/

Daniel Acker Texas Execution

Daniel Acker was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of his girlfriend. According to court documents Daniel Acker would murder Marquetta George by running her over with his truck as he believed the woman was unfaithful to him. Daniel Acker would be executed by lethal injection on September 27 2018

Daniel Acker More News

A Texas inmate was executed Thursday evening for fatally running over his girlfriend in a jealous rage more than 18 years ago. It was the state’s second execution in as many days.

Daniel Acker was condemned for the March 2000 slaying of Marquetta George of Sulphur Springs. Prosecutors said he ran over George with his truck in rural northeast Texas because he believed she had been unfaithful to him.

Asked by the warden if he had any final statement, Acker replied: “No, sir.”

He closed his eyes, took a breath, then slightly exhaled as the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began taking effect. There was no additional movement. He was pronounced dead 14 minutes later at 6:25 p.m.

Acker did not acknowledge the presence of George’s brother, Christopher Follis, who watched through a window a few feet away from him.

Follis declined to speak with reporters after witnessing the punishment. Acker had no friends or relatives present.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Acker’s attorneys on Thursday afternoon. They had argued the Acker was innocent of capital murder because his 32-year-old girlfriend’s fatal injuries were due to her decision to jump from his truck after he abducted her. A similar appeal was rejected earlier this month by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

The 46-year-old Acker became the 18th inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the 10th given a lethal injection in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state.

Acker also was the second Texas inmate put to death in two days. Troy Clark received lethal injection Wednesday for torturing and drowning an East Texas woman in his bathtub and then stuffing her body into a barrel. The executions of Acker and Clark were the first time in nearly six years that Texas put to death inmates on consecutive days.

At least eight other Texas inmates have planned execution dates in the coming months.

At Acker’s trial, several witnesses testified he got into a heated argument with George at a Sulphur Springs nightclub the night before her death over his suspicions she was sleeping with another man. Authorities said that the next day, Acker forced George — kicking and screaming — into his pickup truck. A witness later saw Acker pull George’s body from his truck and lay her on the ground.

In a petition to the Supreme Court, Acker’s attorney, Richard Ellis, had argued the conviction was based on what he describes as a “now discredited” theory that Acker strangled George while he was driving.

Ellis said prosecutors changed their theory of George’s death after a prosecution expert testified at a post-conviction hearing in 2011 that she died from injuries after being run over.

At Acker’s trial, a medical examiner testified George had extensive injuries all over her body and her neck injuries were consistent with strangulation. But the medical examiner could not determine if strangulation or blunt force caused George’s death. The autopsy report did conclude that several of George’s injuries could have resulted from “an impact with or being ejected from a motor vehicle.”

“From the moment Daniel turned himself in to the authorities, he said that the victim Markie George jumped from the truck,” Ellis said. “He has taken full responsibility for abducting her and has shown great remorse for that.”

In its response to Acker’s Supreme Court petition, the Texas Attorney General’s Office argued the theory that Acker ran over his girlfriend was presented at the trial to jurors.

“Acker produces no new evidence showing he did not commit the crime but continues to assert that George’s death resulted from her leap from the vehicle — a theory rejected by the jury at the time of trial,” the attorney general’s office said.

Multiple witnesses testified at Acker’s trial that he made several death threats against George in the hours before her death.

In a 2017 ruling, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the prosecution’s theory of George’s death was “largely based on strangulation.” But in denying Acker’s appeal, the 5th Circuit ruled that all of the evidence, including the updated cause of death, still supports the prosecution’s case as it was presented in the indictment and at trial.

https://apnews.com/article/7a479c607d7d47e6a8211681600eff39