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Rosendo Rodriguez Texas Execution

Rosendo Rodriguez was executed by the State of Texas for the sexual assault and murder of a pregnant woman. According to court documents Rosendo Rodriguez would sexually assault and murder Summer Baldwin before placing her body into a suitcase and leaving it at a Lubbock landfill. Rosendo Rodriguez would be executed on March 27, 2018 by lethal injection

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Texas Tuesday executed a man known as the “suitcase killer” for a 2005 murder and sexual assault of a pregnant woman.

Rosendo Rodriguez III was executed via a lethal dose of pentobarbital after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his final appeal minutes before his execution was scheduled, the Texas Tribune reported

He was sentenced to death for killing Summer Baldwin, a 29-year-old pregnant woman, and discarding her body inside a suitcase in a landfill in Lubbock, Texas.

Rodriguez’s attorneys appealed the sentence with the high court saying the medical examiner’s testimony wasn’t credible and that Baldwin wasn’t sexually assaulted.

Assistant Texas Attorney General Tomee Heining called the appeal “nothing more than a last-ditch effort,” KTRK-TV in Houston reported.

Rodriguez told investigators he had consensual sex with Baldwin, who was a prostitute, but the two then fought and he accidentally killed her when he put her in a chokehold. Medical examiners said injuries on Baldwin’s body were consistent with sexual assault, making Rodriguez eligible for the death penalty.

Investigators linked Rodriguez to Baldwin’s death through the suitcase — he purchased it using his debit card and the tag for the item, as well as the woman’s blood, were found in his hotel room.

Police have implicated Rodriguez in five other sexual assaults and the death of a 16-year-old girl, whose body also was found in a suitcase in the landfill. Prosecutors said they were willing to accept life imprisonment for Rodriguez if he confessed to the death of the teen. He confessed and gave police the location of her body, but backed out of the arrangement before the plea deal could be finalized.

Rodriguez was in Lubbock at the time for training as a member of the U.S. Marines Reserves.

Lubbock County Criminal District Attorney Matt Powell told The Texas Tribune that Rodriguez deserves his sentence.

“Who sticks a human being in a suitcase and throws them out with the trash? This was a guy that, left unchecked, was going to hurt somebody else again and was going to continue to terrorize women,” he said.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/03/27/Texas-executes-suitcase-killer-Rosendo-Rodriguez-III/1061522177231/

William Rayford Texas Execution

William Rayford was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of an ex girlfriend. According to court documents William Rayford would murder his ex girlfriend and attempt to murder her eleven year old son. At the time William Rayford was on parole for murdering his wife. William Rayford would be executed by lethal injection on January 31, 2018

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After the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal for a stay, Texas executed William Rayford on Tuesday night for murdering his ex-girlfriend in 1999. At the time, he was on parole for killing his wife in 1986.

Rayford, 64, was the second Texas inmate to die by lethal injection this year. He filed multiple late appeals, claiming that his sentencing trial for murdering his ex-girlfriend was tainted by racial prejudice. He claimed that he was wrongly denied federal funding to allow further investigation of evidence in hopes of a lighter sentence from the jury.

In November 1999, Rayford entered 44-year-old Carol Hall’s house, began arguing with her, then stabbed her 11-year-old son in the back and chased her out of her Oak Cliff home. Her body was later found 300 feet inside a drainage pipe behind her home.

A Sunday school teacher, Hall had defended her relationship with Rayford, claiming it was her Christian duty to give him a second chance although he had stabbed his estranged wife in front of their four children. Her son later testified at Rayford’s trial that he had watched Rayford carry his mother toward the drainage pipe where her body was later found beaten, stabbed repeatedly and strangled.

Rayford was arrested at the scene. Hall’s blood covered his face and clothing.

In his petition to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in early January, Rayford’s lawyers introduced new claims that Rayford had brain damage caused by lead poisoning from a decades-old bullet fragment in his body and exposure to contaminated water when he was a child.

They also argued that his case mirrored the case of death row inmate Duane Buck. In February 2016, the appeals court ruled that Buck’s case was prejudiced by an expert trial witness and resentenced him to life in prison. Rayford’s lawyers claimed that he had experienced the same issue in his case when the state’s expert witness said that the racial makeup of prison units factors into prison assaults.

Rayford’s appeal was denied Friday. The court ruled that although lead poisoning wasn’t mentioned in the sentencing for the 1999 murder, Rayford’s defense brought up his mental illness, substance abuse and difficult childhood, none of which excuses beating, strangling and knifing an ex-girlfriend or stabbing her child.

Judge Barbara Hervey wrote that the state’s expert witness didn’t give any opinions about race in Rayford’s trial, unlike the expert witness from Buck’s trial, who claimed Buck would be a future danger to society because he was black.

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-executes-william-rayford-for-killing-ex-girlfriend-while-on-parole-for-killing-wife-10314824

Anthony Shore Texas Execution

Anthony Shore was a serial killer who was executed by the State of Texas for multiple murders. According to court documents Anthony Shore would murder three girls and one woman over a fourteen year period. Shore who was known as the tourniquet killer for his preference of wrapping a ligature around the victims neck and would tighten it with a pencil or a toothbrush. Anthony Shore would be executed by lethal injection on January 18, 2018

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Texas carried out the nation’s first execution of 2018 Thursday evening, giving lethal injection to a man who became known as Houston’s “Tourniquet Killer” because of his signature murder technique on four female victims.

Anthony Allen Shore was put to death for one of those slayings, the 1992 killing of a 21-year-old woman whose body was dumped in the drive-thru of a Houston Dairy Queen.

In his final statement, Anthony Shore, 55, was apologetic and his voice cracked with emotion.

“No amount of words or apology could ever undo what I’ve done,” Shore said while strapped to the death chamber gurney. “I wish I could undo the past, but it is what it is.”

As the lethal dose of pentobarbital began, Shore said the drug burned. “Oooh-ee! I can feel that,” he said before slipping into unconsciousness.

He was pronounced dead 13 minutes later at 6:28 p.m. CST.

“Anthony Allen Shore’s reign of terror is officially over,” Andy Kahan, the city of Houston crime victims’ advocate, said, speaking for the families of Shore’s victims. “There’s a reason we have the death penalty in the state of Texas and Anthony Shore is on the top of the list. This has been a long, arduous journey that has taken over 20 years for victims’ families.”

Shore’s lawyers argued in appeals he suffered brain damage early in life that went undiscovered by his trial attorneys and affected Shore’s decision to disregard their advice when he told his trial judge he wanted the death penalty. A federal appeals court last year turned down his appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case and the six-member Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously rejected a clemency petition.

Shore’s attorneys said his appeals were exhausted. They filed no last-minute attempts to try to halt his execution.

In 1998, Anthony Shore received eight years’ probation and became a registered sex offender for sexually assaulting two relatives. Five years later, Shore was arrested for the 1992 slaying of Maria del Carmen Estrada after a tiny particle recovered from under her fingernail was matched to his DNA.

“I didn’t set out to kill her,” he told police in a taped interview played at his 2004 trial. “That was not my intent. But it got out of hand.”

Estrada was walking to work around 6:30 a.m. on April 16, 1992, when he she accepted a ride from him. The former tow truck driver, phone company repairman and part-time musician blamed his actions on “voices in my head that I was going to have her, regardless, to possess her in some way.”

He also confessed to killing three others, a 9-year-old and two teenagers. All four of his victims were Hispanic and at least three had been raped. Jurors also heard from three women who testified he raped them.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who as an assistant prosecutor worked the then-unsolved Estrada case, said crime scene photos showed Estrada was tortured and had suffered as a stick was used to tighten a cord around her neck.

“I know this case, I know his work and the death penalty is appropriate,” she said. “A jury in this case gave Shore death. … I think he’s reached the end of the road and now it’s up to government to complete the job.”

Besides Estrada, Shore confessed to the slayings of Laurie Tremblay, 15, found beside a trash bin outside a Houston restaurant in 1986; Diana Rebollar, 9, abducted while walking to a neighborhood grocery store in 1994; and Dana Sanchez, 16, who disappeared in 1995 while hitchhiking to her boyfriend’s home in Houston.

Sanchez’s body was found after a caller to a Houston TV station provided directions on where to find it. Police believe Shore was the caller.

Shore’s execution originally was set for last October but was delayed for an investigation after another Texas death row inmate concocted a scheme to get Shore to take responsibility for his crimes.

In 2017, 23 convicted killers were put to death in the U.S., seven of them in Texas, more than another state. Three more inmates are scheduled to die in Texas in the coming weeks

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/tourniquet-killer-anthony-allen-shore-executed-texas-1992-strangling-n839056

Travis Runnels Texas Execution

Travis Runnels was executed by the State of Texas for a prison murder that took place in 2003. According to court documents Travis Runnels would murder prison supervisor Stanley Wiley on Jan. 29, 2003. Travis Runnels who was serving a 70 year sentence for armed robbery was upset that Wiley prevented his transfer to the prison barbershop. Travis Runnels would be executed by lethal injection on December 12, 2019

Travis Runnels More News

A Texas inmate was executed by lethal injection Wednesday evening for killing a supervisor at a state prison shoe factory in Amarillo nearly 17 years ago.

Travis Runnels, 46, was convicted of slashing the throat of 38-year-old Stanley Wiley on Jan. 29, 2003. Runnels was executed at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

Prosecutors say Runnels killed Wiley at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Clements Unit in Amarillo because he didn’t like working as a janitor at the shoe factory. They said Runnels had wanted to transfer to a job at the prison barber shop and was angry at Wiley because that hadn’t happened.

Runnels, belted to the death chamber gurney, responded “no” when the warden asked whether he had a final statement. As the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began, he smiled and mouthed words and a kiss toward three female friends and two of his attorneys who watched through a window a few feet from him. Then he blurted out, “Woof, woof!” just before taking four quick breaths and snoring four times before all movement stopped

Runnels was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. Central time, 22 minutes after the drug began flowing into his arms, making him the 22nd inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the ninth in Texas.

He never looked at the sister and brother-in-law of his victim, who watched through a window in an adjacent witness room.

Outside the Huntsville Unit prison, several hundred Texas corrections officers stood in formation, and Wiley’s sister, Margaret Robertson, hugged or shook the hands of many of them as she and her husband left the prison.

Runnels had been serving a 70-year sentence for an aggravated robbery conviction in Dallas when he killed Wiley with a knife used to trim shoes. The factory makes shoes for inmates in the state prison system.

The execution was delayed about an hour until the U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal by Runnels’ attorneys, who said that a prosecution witness at his 2005 trial provided false testimony and that no defense was presented because his lawyers advised him to plead guilty and called no witnesses.

Janet Gilger-VanderZanden, one of his more recent attorneys, said Runnels changed during his 14 years on death row.

“There is true and authentic remorse for the death of Mr. Wiley. There are no excuses, rather there is a commitment to finding some kind of light in what was once a world of only darkness,” Gilger-VanderZanden said.

Lower courts and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had also turned down Runnels’ attorneys’ requests to stop his execution.

Four inmates who were convicted in the deaths of state correctional officers or other prison employees have been put to death since 1974, while three others remain on death row, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

At the factory, Runnels approached Wiley from behind, pulled his head back and used enough force for the knife to go through his trachea and cut Wiley’s spinal cord.

“It was cowardly,” prosecutor Randall Sims told jurors at Runnels’ trial.

Wiley, who grew up in the Texas Panhandle city of Amarillo, began working as a state corrections officer in 1994. He was later promoted to a supervisory position.

Inmate Bud Williams Jr., who also worked at the shoe factory, testified that Wiley “was a good guy.”

At his trial, Runnels’ lawyers didn’t present any witnesses or evidence, including information about Runnels’ troubled childhood and family history of drug and alcohol abuse, Gilger-VanderZanden said.

In their petition to the Supreme Court, Runnels’ attorneys argued that his death sentence was mainly a consequence of the testimony of prison expert A.P. Merillat, who told jurors that inmates like Runnels could not be held in a secure environment if sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the death sentences of two inmates, in 2010 and 2012, after ruling that Merillat gave jurors incorrect information.

The Texas attorney general’s office pointed to assaults by Runnels on other guards after Wiley’s death, including throwing feces and a light bulb at them, as evidence that he was a future danger and merited a death sentence.

In his clemency petition to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Runnels included letters from more than 25 individuals from around the world who said Runnels had worked to make amends for what he did.

“He has become a light that shines bright even in the darkest of spaces. The tragedy that he is responsible for will only be compounded if his valuable light were to be extinguished,” Kristin Procanick, from Syracuse, N.Y., wrote in one of the letters.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-12-11/texas-executes-travis-runnels-prison-supervisor-death

Justen Hall Texas Execution

Justen Hall was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a woman in 2002. According to court documents Justen Hall was a captain of a white national group who would strangle to death Melanie Billhartz. Justen Hall would be executed by lethal injection on November 6, 2019.

Justen Hall More News

Texas executed a 38-year-old man Wednesday night for the 2002 slaying of a woman in El Paso.

Justen Hall was the eighth person executed in Texas in 2019. Just after 6 p.m., he was strapped to a gurney in the Huntsville execution chamber. Hall, identified in court documents as a district captain of a white nationalist gang, was convicted in the strangling of Melanie Billhartz in El Paso.

Billhartz’s cousin, Cameron Rountree,along with Hall’s mother and half-sister, watched from the viewing room as Hall was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 6:13 p.m. He was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m.

In his final statement, Hall said he wanted to address Billhartz’s relatives and “apologize for the pain and suffering” he caused.

“And to my mom and Morelia, I love you and I’m going to miss you all,” he said. “I’m ready.”

Hall killed Billhartz while out on bond from a previous murder charge, according to media reports. Newspaper articles identified that previous murder victim as Arlene Diaz. During a 2017 court hearing, Hall admitted killing Diaz.

“And to the Diaz family that I had to put you through this, it should have never happened,” Hall said shortly before his death Wednesday, according to prison officials.

Hall’s lawyers filed a motion last month asking an El Paso court to push back Hall’s execution date until experts can evaluate his competency. The motion stated Hall refused contact with counsel for at least two years and argued that his behavior signaled a drastic decline in his already troubled mental state.

Hall stated he was competent to represent himself — and two doctors agreed in 2017. He asked courts to waive his appeals and schedule an execution date.

“I do not like the person I have become, and I need to be put down like the rabid dog that I am,” he wrote to a trial judge on Oct. 6, 2016.

But Hall’s attorneys have questioned his competency, pointing to a history of delusion, paranoia and suicidal behavior. In January, a court ruled against reconsidering Hall’s competency.

“Mr. Hall’s campaign to drop all appeals and cut off all communication with his counsel for the past two and a half years further confirms that he is being driven by his paranoid delusions to seek to use the State’s power to facilitate his own self-destruction,” the attorneys wrote in their motion to an El Paso district court.

El Paso District Attorney Jaime Esparza said in a statement that Hall has confessed to two murders and “demonstrated that, if given the opportunity, he will commit acts of violence that constitute a continuing threat to society.”

On Oct. 28, 2002, Billhartz and Ted Murgatroyd, an alleged gang prospect, got into an argument near a drug house, according to court documents. After Billhartz threatened to call the police — drawing authorities to the gang’s meth lab — she disappeared with Hall in her truck. Murgatroyd said Hall came back hours later with Billhartz’s body in the back of the cab, according to court records. Hall told Murgatroyd to get a shovel and machete to bury Billhartz. The two drove to New Mexico, where Hall told Murgatroyd to cut off the victim’s fingers to prevent DNA from being found before dumping Billhartz’s body, records state.

Weeks later, Murgatroyd led investigators to the body. Hall, then 21, was arrested later that day and confessed to the killing on Nov. 25, 2002.

He was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2005.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/11/06/texas-death-row-inmate-justen-hall-execution-scheduled/