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Troy Clark Texas Execution

Troy Clark was executed by the State of Texas for the kidnapping and murder of a woman. According to court documents Troy Clark would kidnap his roommate Christina Muse who was beaten and drowned before her body was shoved into a barrel which he poured in concrete and hid on his landlords property. Troy Clark would be executed by lethal injection on September 26, 2018

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The first of two scheduled Texas executions this week took place Wednesday evening.

Troy Clark, 51, was convicted in the 1998 Tyler kidnapping and murder of Christina Muse, and he had been accused of two other murders and a slew of other crimes, according to court records. The prosecution said Clark beat and drowned Muse before stuffing her body in a barrel with concrete and hiding it on his landlord’s property.

With no last-minute legal challenges, Clark was placed on the gurney in the execution chamber shortly after 6 p.m. His spouse and four friends stood behind a glass pane in a small room off the chamber, and family members of the victims gathered in an adjacent room, according to a witness list from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. After giving his final statement into a microphone hanging above his head, he was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital and pronounced dead at 6:36 p.m.

“I’m not the one that killed Christina, so whatever makes y’all happy,” Clark said in his last words. “I love y’all. I’ll see you on the other side.”

His conviction had been questioned by anti-death penalty advocates, since it was largely based on the testimony of his then girlfriend who also faced a murder charge. And for years, his legal fight had focused on a lack of evidence presented at trial that could have swayed the jury to opt for the lesser sentence of life, like his suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome.

At the time of Muse’s murder, Clark was living with his girlfriend, Tory Bush. The three would do drugs together — court records show Clark used and dealt methamphetamines — but Bush testified at trial that on May 19, 1998, Muse came over and Clark tased her with a stun gun, taped her hands, ankles and mouth and then put her in a closet. Several hours later, he took her to the bathroom, beat her over the head with a wooden board and had Bush help him drown her in the bathtub, according to Bush.

The barrel and Muse’s decomposing body were found months later after Bush spoke to police while under arrest on another charge.

In 2000, Bush said at Clark’s trial that he was paranoid and thought Muse was talking to the wrong people about his drug dealings. After he tased her, “He told her, he said, ‘You should have kept your mouth shut,’” Bush told the jury.

Others testified that they had helped Clark load a blue barrel on his truck the day Muse disappeared. And the state also brought forth witnesses that indicated he had killed two other people, including a man whose body was found in a septic tank on the same property as Muse, according to federal court filings.

In an unsuccessful last-ditch petition to the Texas parole board asking for a reduced sentence, Clark’s attorney pointed out that Bush’s testimony — which played a large role at trial — had changed several times.

Previously, Bush said she thought the man found in the septic tank was to blame for Muse’s death, and then she gave a detailed statement saying she killed Muse out of jealousy and that Clark wasn’t even home at the time. In that statement, she told police if Clark were implicated in the murder, he “would just cover up for me.”

At trial, attorneys briefly questioned Bush on her changing testimony, and she said she had lied earlier because she was afraid of Clark and also loved him, the trial record shows.

“He wanted me to change the whole story,” Bush testified. “He wanted me to lay the blame on two other people, and those two other people are dead.”

She acknowledged on cross examination that she had been given a promise of a 30-year recommended sentence for her involvement in the murder if she cooperated with the prosecution. Bush ultimately pleaded guilty to a 20-year sentence and has since been released from prison.

“Clark’s death sentence is the product of the largely uncorroborated testimony of an incentivized co-defendant and a trial attorney whose performance was abysmal,” wrote David Dow, Clark’s current attorney, in his plea to the parole board.

The board voted unanimously against Clark’s petition on Monday.

Clark’s appellate attorneys had also sought a second chance from the courts because the defense attorneys at his trial didn’t present mitigating evidence that could have led to a sentence of life in prison instead of death. In the petition to the parole board, Dow wrote that an investigation by the defense would have shown that Clark suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome.

Though that had not yet been presented to the courts, they had ruled against earlier claims faulting his defense attorney based on the lack of evidence at trial, largely because of the heinous crime and Clark’s own testimony at trial. Against his attorney’s advice, hekept his family from testifying on his behalf and asked the jury to give him the death penalty.

“Given applicant’s behavior on the witness stand at the punishment phase, during which he continued to deny his guilt, expressed no remorse, and asked the jury to give him the death penalty, it is improbable that the presentation of mitigation evidence relating to his troubled childhood and cognitive deficits would have persuaded the jury to sentence him to life instead of death,” said Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Elsa Alcala, a known death penalty critic, in a 2014 opinion.

Clark’s execution Wednesday was the ninth of the year in Texas. On Thursday, the death chamber was scheduled to hold another execution for Daniel Acker, who was sentenced to death in the 2000 murder of his girlfriend in Hopkins County.

Six others are on the schedule through December, and two more are set for next year, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. In 2016 and 2017, the state put seven people to death each year.

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/09/26/troy-clark-execution-texas-murder/

Christopher Young Texas Execution

Christopher Young was executed by the State of Texas for a robbery murder. According to court documents Christopher Young would enter a store where he would fatally shoot the owner Hasmukh “Hash” Patel during a robbery attempt. Christopher Young would be executed by lethal injection on July 18, 2018

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Texas death row inmate has been executed for murdering a store owner in 2004, despite pleas from the victim’s family for clemency.

Christopher Young, 34, was put to death by lethal injection. He was administered pentobarbital at a facility in Huntsville.

He was convicted of the murder of San Antonio convenience store owner Hasmukh “Hash” Patel during an attempted robbery in November 2004.

Young admitted shooting Patel, but denied intending to kill him during the robbery, which took place after Young drank nearly two dozen beers and had taken cocaine, reports Associated Press. He had also sexually assaulted and carjacked a woman on the same night.

In his final words, Young apologized to the victim’s family. “I want to make sure the Patel family knows I love them like they love me,” he said.

“Make sure the kids in the world know I’m being executed and those kids I’ve been mentoring keep this fight going. I’m good warden.”

After being administered the lethal injection, Young reportedly complained that it was burning his throat. “I taste it in my throat,” he said.

Young was pronounced dead at 6:38 p.m. CDT, around 25 minutes after he was first administered the dose.

Patel’s family had opposed the execution of Young, with the pair knowing each other before the fatal robbery in 2004.

“I really do believe Chris Young today is not the person he was 14 years ago,” the victim’s son, Mitesh Patel, said prior to Young’s execution, reports CNN. “It’s really unfortunate that the board didn’t hear our request for clemency. I feel sadness for his family. They’re going to be walking down the same path my family has been on the last 14 years.”

Anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean also condemned the decision to execute Young. “Over many years working against the death penalty, I’ve often heard the argument that executions bring closure and justice to victims’ families,” she said.

“What about families who don’t want an execution? They are ignored by prosecutors, judges and politicians. Where’s the justice for them?

Elsewhere, nearly 55,000 people signed an online petition urging “mercy” for Young.

A week before he was put to death, Young’s request for clemency was rejected by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. David Dow and Jeff Newberry, attorneys for Young, filed a complaint in federal court after the board rejected his appeal because Young is black, reports KSAT 12.

The appeal was rejected by a Houston judge the day before he was put to death.

In a video for civil rights group Law At The Margins, Young described how being in death row had saved his life.

“I truly believe if I would not have come to death row when I did, I would be one of two places: in prison or murdered in the streets,” Young said.

“If I would have gone straight to prison with the attitude I had, my growth process would not have started, and my gang-banging ways would still be there. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to look at myself and tell myself I was doing wrong. I wouldn’t have been able to help anybody.

“I’m truly sorry for the crime I committed. There’s nothing I can do to bring back Mr. Hash Patel. If I knew taking my life would do that, I’d volunteer for it without any complaints.

But that’s not going to do it. I can teach others to think about their actions. I’m sure I can stop something like this from happening again.”

Young is the eighth person to be executed in Texas this year and 12^th overall in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

https://www.newsweek.com/texas-inmate-executed-killing-shop-owner-sedative-i-taste-it-my-throat-1029674

Danny Bible Texas Execution

Danny Bible was a serial killer who was executed by the State of Texas for a series of murders. According to court documents Danny Bible sexually assaulted and murdered six women including four in Texas. Danny Bible would be executed by lethal injection on June 27, 2018

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The death row inmate argued that officials likely wouldn’t be able to find a vein, and he proposed that the state instead use a firing squad or nitrogen gas. His execution proceeded with no indication of trouble injecting the drugs.

It was nearly 40 years ago when the brutalized body of 20-year-old Inez Deaton was found in a field near a deserted car wash in Harris County.

She had been raped and repeatedly stabbed with an ice pick in May 1979, and for about two decades, her murder went unsolved. Then in 1998, Danny Bible was arrested in Louisiana in another rape case, where he confessed during police interrogations to that rape as well as Deaton’s murder, according to court records. He was dubbed “the ice pick killer.”

On Wednesday evening, Bible, a 66-year-old in a wheelchair who claimed his veins would not handle a lethal injection, was put to death for Deaton’s murder. He uttered no final words.

The execution team was able to insert a fatal dose of pentobarbital into his bloodstream at 6:17 p.m., and 15 minutes later, he was pronounced dead, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The Houston Chronicle reported that Bible — who had IVs inserted into his hands instead of the crook of his arm as usual — trembled from Parkinson’s Disease and muttered “burning” and “it hurts” before falling silent and losing consciousness.

Bible was the second person to be executed under Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, a Democrat elected in 2016 who has drawn in the reins on the death penalty in the county that has sent more people to the execution chamber than any state aside from Texas itself.

“Some criminals’ actions are so heinous, they earn the label ‘worst of the worst,’” Ogg said in a statement after Bible’s execution date was set in March. “The jury who listened to the facts and saw the evidence of the crimes Danny Bible committed clearly reached that conclusion by sentencing him to death.”

The brother of Pamela Hudgins, another one of Bible’s murder victims, said after the execution that Bible was a vile and evil person.

“We are glad to have witnessed him draw his last breath,” Larry Lance said in a statement provided by TDCJ. “I know that he will burn in hell for eternity.”

Bible and his attorneys fought his execution, in part by claiming that he was too sick to be put to death by lethal injection — that his veins were too weak and he would likely choke laying on his back on the gurney. Bible suffered from multiple heart and lung conditions as well as from Parkinson’s Disease. They argued that since courts require inmates to propose an alternative when generally challenging a state’s execution method, Texas could consider killing him using a firing squad or nitrogen gas.

“Because of his poor health, Mr. Bible has severely compromised peripheral veins, meaning it will be difficult, if not impossible, to establish two functioning IVs in his veins, creating a substantial risk of either a botched execution or an aborted execution attempt,” wrote one of Bible’s attorneys, Jeremy Schepers, in his appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday.

The brief pointed to other execution attempts on sick inmates that failed because officials couldn’t find a vein. In February, Alabama officials called off the execution of Doyle Hamm, a cancer patient, after failing for hours to insert a needle. Last November, Ohio officials had to call off the execution of Alva Campbell, who also had cancer, used a colostomy bag and could not breathe lying down, for the same reason (He has since died in prison). And Ohio faced a similar complication before: in 2009, the state’s attempted execution of Romell Broom failed, and Broom said the pain was so excruciating, he cried and screamed.

The state countered Bible’s argument in its brief on Monday by first mentioning that he was a serial rapist and murderer and adding that his claims of an inhumane and painful execution were speculation. The executioners were seemingly able to find a vein, since the execution began shortly after 6 p.m., when the death warrant became active.

The state’s attorneys also seemed to knock the other proposed execution methods — worth noting as the state has struggled to get a hold of new lethal injection drugs.

“The pain inherent in Bible’s hypothetical probing or hypothetical failed vein pales in comparison to the congruent possibility of mishaps occurring with Bible’s proposed alternatives — for instance, a lingering death from a misplaced gunshot wound or an incomplete suffocation causing brain damage from oxygen deprivation,” wrote Texas Assistant Attorney General Stephen Hoffman.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Bible’s final appeal about a half hour before his execution was scheduled to begin. Lower courts said Bible hadn’t adequately shown that there would be difficulty finding a vein, nor had he shown that repeated, unsuccessful attempts to find a vein qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.

Bible’s recent state appeals also fought to stop his execution by faulting the state’s secretive and exceedingly rare clemency process — where the parole board can recommend that the governor reduce a death row inmate’s sentence to life in prison shortly before execution. The parole board unanimously rejected Bible’s clemency petition Monday.

Bible also argued that he should have been granted a new punishment trial — when jurors decide on issues that would lead to a death sentence or one of life in prison after finding the person guilty of capital murder — after a prison van accident left him disabled.

While being transferred from the county jail to death row after being convicted and sentenced to death in 2003, the prison van carrying Bible was in a head-on collision, according to court records. The drivers of both vehicles were killed and Bible was severely injured, leaving him unable to walk without assistance. In the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, he argued that because of this accident and his disability, jurors may not have deemed Bible a future danger, despite his lengthy criminal background. To sentence someone to death in Texas, jurors must unanimously agree that a capital murder convict is a future danger.

The Texas court rejected the appeals on clemency and future dangerousness Friday.

Though Bible fought his death sentence until the end of his life, his lawyer said he had accepted the responsibility for Deaton’s murder. Margaret Schmucker, his state appellate lawyer, said Tuesday that he was already serving a life sentence in Louisiana and would have never been released.

In his 1998 confession to Louisiana officers, Bible said Deaton walked into his uncle’s house in 1979, where he was staying, and he raped her. He then stabbed her to death with an ice pick, put her in a garbage bag, and dumped her in a field, according to court records. She was a friend of his cousin, and the mother of a toddler.

Bible fled Texas when the young mother’s body was discovered shortly after the murder, according to the state’s filing, but his crimes did not stop. In Louisiana, Bible confessed to the 1998 rape that led to his arrest, Deaton’s murder, and the 1983 murders of his former sister-in-law, her baby and her roommate. He also said he sexually assaulted his five young nieces. He had already served a prison sentence for one of the 1983 murders but was released on parole. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life without parole in Louisiana for the aggravated rape.

For Deaton, he got death.

He was the seventh person Texas puts to death this year, matching the total number of executions from 2017. Last year, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped upcoming executions seven times, but this year, it has only stopped one. Seven other executions are scheduled through October, though there are questions about the supply of drugs in stock.

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/06/27/danny-bible-faces-execution-1979-texas-rape-and-murder-he-says-hes-too/

Danny Bible Execution Video

Juan Castillo Texas Execution

Juan Castillo was executed by the State of Texas for a robbery murder in 2003. According to court documents in the course of a robbery Juan Castillo shot and killed Tommy Garcia Jr, Tommy Garcia Jr was lured to a remote location with the promise of sex and when he tried to run he was shot and killed by Juan Castillo. Juan Castillo admitted to being there but denied killing Garcia. Juan Castillo would be executed by lethal injection on May 16, 2018

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Juan Castillo was put to death Wednesday evening, ending his death sentence on his fourth execution date within the year.

The 37-year-old was executed for the 2003 robbery and murder of Tommy Garcia Jr. in San Antonio. The execution had been postponed three times since last May, including a rescheduling because of Hurricane Harvey.

Castillo’sadvocates and attorneys had insisted on his innocence in Garcia’s murder, pleading unsuccessfully for a last-minute 30-day stay of execution from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott after all of his appeals were rejected in the courts. The Texas Defender Service, a capital defense group who had recently picked up Castillo’s case, asked Abbott for the delay to let its lawyers fully investigate claims they said discredited the prosecution’s evidence against Castillo — including recanted statements and video of police interrogations that contradict testimony at trial.

But with no action from the governor, Castillo was taken into the death chamber in Huntsville, and at 6:21 p.m., injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital, according to the Texas Department of Justice. Twenty-three minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

“To everyone that has been there for me, you know who you are,” Castillo said in his final words. “See y’all on the other side.”

A Houston Chronicle reporter who attended the execution said Castillo added: “Shit does burn.”

Prosecutors said Castillo and three others lured Garcia to a secluded area in 2003 to rob him by promising him sex with one of Castillo’s female accomplices. When Garcia tried to run, Castillo shot him, according to the accomplices. Castillo was convicted and sentenced to death in 2005.

A man who bunked near Castillo in the Bexar County jail, Gerardo Gutierrez, also testified that Castillo had confessed to him about the murder. The matching testimonies were enough to satisfy a jury, and Castillo was convicted of capital murder. The three others involved in the crime all received lesser charges and sentences — one woman is out on parole, and the other two got 40-year sentences and are eligible for parole within the next six years, according to criminal records.

Prosecutors at the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office remain fully confident that Castillo was the triggerman in Garcia’s murder. Assistant Criminal District Attorney Matt Howard said the death penalty is always a heavy decision to weigh but that Castillo is deserving of the ultimate punishment.

“Understanding the evidence, this was one of those cases where I think the jury came to the right conclusion” of a death sentence, Howard said.

Castillo’s first execution date was set for last May, but it was rescheduled for September, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The September execution — set about a week after Hurricane Harvey devastated the Texas coast — was also delayed at the request of Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood, since some of Castillo’s legal team lived in Houston.

It was moved to December, and that time the courts took action after the jailhouse informant changed his story.

In 2013, Gutierrez signed an affidavit saying that he lied in his testimony against Castillo “to try to help myself.” The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped Castillo’s December execution because of the affidavit, telling the trial court to look into the issue of false testimony.

Three days later, the Bexar County court issued its decision: Gutierrez’s new statement saying he lied wasn’t credible since his original testimony so closely matched that from the others who testified against Castillo.

“Gutierrez’s 2013 affidavit makes no explanation for how he, while incarcerated in the Bexar County Adult Detention Center, independently manufactured a version of events consistent with multiple other witnesses,” wrote Judge Maria Teresa Herr in her quickly produced opinion.

The Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the ruling earlier this year, and Castillo was given an execution date of May 16.

Castillo’s attorneys admonished the trial court for denouncing Gutierrez’s affidavit without holding an evidentiary hearing or getting information from Castillo or Gutierrez, claiming the courts denied their client meaningful consideration on the issue. But the prosecution said the court already had “extensive background” about the affidavit before it officially reached the court, which accounted for the rapid decision to reject it, according to Howard.

Still, Castillo filed a new appeal with claims that the prosecution withheld evidence and presented false or misleading testimony. The Court of Criminal Appeals rejected it on procedural grounds without reviewing the merits of his claims, leaving Castillo’s attorneys to turn to their last shot, Abbott.

In the defense’s letter to the governor Tuesday, Marzullo wrote that her organization has recently discovered new evidence that contradicts the original testimony given at Castillo’s trial — specifically, a video of woman who previously claimed Castillo confessed to her telling police that he had never told her he was the triggerman and a new statement from a man who now says he inaccurately testified that Castillo confessed to him. Marzullo also mentioned a lack of physical evidence connecting Castillo to the murder and the unreliability of testimony from accomplices and jailhouse informants.

“I am sure that your office is inundated with defense counsel pleas for mercy,” she wrote to the governor. “Yet, this is a request that I do not enter lightly. From the moment of his arrest through clemency, Juan has had a litany of lawyers who did not fully examine serious questions regarding his guilt.”

Abbott usually takes no part in death penalty cases, letting the court’s rulings stand, but he did grant a rare commutation of sentence for Thomas Whitaker earlier this year, stopping his execution minutes before it was set to proceed and changing his sentence to life in prison. But that decision came after an even rarer unanimous decision by the state’s parole board to grant clemency and change Whitaker’s sentence.

On Monday, that parole board unanimously voted to reject Castillo’s clemency petition, and following Abbott’s silence on the issue, he became the sixth person executed in Texas this year and the 11th in the country.

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/05/16/texas-execute-juan-castillo-murder-tommy-garcia/

Erick Davila Texas Execution

Erick Davila was executed by the State of Texas for a gang killing that left two people dead. According to court documents Erick Davila would open fire at a child’s birthday party killing Annette Stevenson, 48, and her granddaughter, Queshawn Stevenson. Three other children were injured in the shooting. Erick Davila would be executed by lethal injection on April 25, 201i8

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Texas on Wednesday executed a man convicted of opening fire at a children’s birthday party in 2008, believing a rival gang member was present and fatally shooting a woman and her 5-year-old granddaughter in a spray of bullets.

Erick Davila, 31, died by lethal injection at Texas’ execution chamber in Huntsville, a prisons official said.

It was the ninth execution this year in the United States, and the 550th in Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the most of any state. Texas has put five inmates to death this year.

“I might have lost the fight but I’m still a soldier. I still love you all. To my supporters and family, y’all hold it down,” Davila was quoted by prisons officials as saying in his last statement.

Prosecutors said Davila was a member of the Bloods street gang and drove by the party in Fort Worth, believing that members of the rival Crips gang were there.

Using a semiautomatic rifle with a laser scope, he fired numerous shots into the group while attendees were eating cake and ice cream at the “Hannah Montana”-themed party for a girl, killing Annette Stevenson, 48, and her granddaughter, Queshawn Stevenson, court documents showed.

He also wounded three other children and one woman, according to the documents.

It took jurors about four hours to convict Davila at his trial in 2009.

Texas said he confessed to the killings and told investigators he intended to “have a shoot-‘em-up” and kill the father of Queshawn Stevenson, a rival gang member who was not injured in the attack.

Davila’s lawyers had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution, arguing in a last-minute appeal that prosecutors in his trial violated a court decision by hiding evidence favorable to the defense of Davila being high on drugs at the time of the shootings.

They also said it was inappropriate for his former trial judge, now the prosecuting attorney, to seek his execution date.

The court rejected the appeal without providing details, issuing its decision less than 15 minutes before the planned execution time.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-texas-execution-idUSKBN1HW151