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Robert Sparks Texas Execution

Robert Sparks was executed by the State of Texas for a triple murder. According to court documents Robert Sparks would stab his wife to death as he believed that she was poisoning him. Robert Sparks would then stab to death his two stepsons ages ten and nine before tying up and sexually assaulting his two stepdaughters. Robert Sparks would be executed by lethal injection on September 26, 2019

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A Texas inmate who claimed he was intellectually disabled was executed Wednesday for fatally stabbing his two stepsons during a 2007 attack in which his wife also died.

Robert Sparks received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the slayings of 9-year-old Harold Sublet and 10-year-old Raekwon Agnew in their Dallas home. Sparks, 45, became the 16th inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the seventh in Texas.

“I am sorry for the hard times. And what hurts me is that I hurt y’all … even y’all, too,” Sparks told his relatives and friends who watched through a death chamber window, turning his head at one point to address family members of his victims who stood behind a separate window.

As the lethal dose of pentobarbital began, he said, “I love you all” and then added, “I feel it.”

He took two deep breaths almost immediately, snored three times and then all movement ceased. He was pronounced dead 23 minutes later, at 6:39 p.m. CDT.

Seven more executions are scheduled this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state.

Prosecutors said the attack in September 2007 began when Sparks stabbed his wife, 30-year-old Chare Agnew, 18 times as she lay in her bed. Sparks then went into the boys’ bedroom and separately took them into the kitchen, where he stabbed them. Raekwon was stabbed at least 45 times.

Sparks then raped his 12- and 14-year-old stepdaughters, authorities said.

“The day when the situation was going on, he said that we wouldn’t make it,” one of the stepdaughters, Lakenya Agnew, said after witnessing Sparks’ execution. “Twelve years later, we’re both standing here. … I want him to know we’re not suffering. We’re hurt emotionally but physically we’re fine.”

She added that Sparks being put to death “kills the nightmare.”

The Associated Press usually doesn’t name victims of sexual assault, but Agnew spoke publicly and identified herself.

On Wednesday with the execution time approaching, the U.S. Supreme Court declined a request by Sparks’ attorneys to stop the lethal injection. They had alleged his trial jury was improperly influenced because a bailiff wore a tie with an image of a syringe that showed his support for the death penalty. In the ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that while she didn’t disagree with the denial, she found the bailiff’s actions “deeply troubling.”

Sparks also had alleged a prosecution witness at his trial provided false testimony regarding his prison classification if a jury chose life without parole rather than a death sentence.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday declined to stop the execution on claims he was intellectually disabled, saying his attorneys had not presented sufficient evidence to show Sparks was mentally disabled and his attorneys had failed to raise such a claim in a timely manner.

In August, the 5th Circuit did grant a stay for Dexter Johnson, another Texas death row inmate who also claims he is intellectually disabled. In that case, the appeals court ruled Johnson had made a sufficient showing of possible intellectual disability that needed further review.

“My co-counsel and I may have lost this battle, but we remain undeterred soldiers in the enduring war for capital conviction integrity,” said Seth Kretzer, one of Sparks’ appellate attorneys.

After being arrested, Sparks told police he fatally stabbed his wife and stepsons because he believed they were trying to poison him. Sparks told a psychologist that a voice told him “to kill them because they were trying to kill me.”

Sparks’ lawyers had argued he suffered from severe mental illness and had been diagnosed as a delusional psychotic and with schizoaffective disorder, a condition characterized by hallucinations.

A psychologist hired by Sparks’ attorneys said in an affidavit this month that Sparks “meets full criteria for a diagnosis of” intellectual disability.

The Supreme Court in 2002 barred execution of mentally disabled people but has given states some discretion to decide how to determine intellectual disability. However, justices have wrestled with how much discretion to allow.

Sparks’ attorneys said that at the time of his trial, he was not deemed intellectually disabled, but that changes since then in how Texas makes such determinations and updates to the handbook used by medical professionals to diagnose mental disorders would have changed that.

On whether Sparks’ jury was improperly influenced by the bailiff’s tie with an image of a syringe, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said the jury forewoman indicated she never saw the tie and had no knowledge of it affecting the jurors.

The attorney general’s office said the testimony from the prosecution witness on prison classification was corrected on cross-examination.

“Sparks committed a heinous crime which resulted in the murders of two young children. He is unable to overcome the overwhelming testimony” in his case, the attorney general’s office said in its court filing with the Supreme Court.

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2019/09/25/inmate-dallas-robert-sparks-executed-stabbing-deaths-stepsons/

Mark Soliz Texas Execution

Mark Soliz was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of an elderly woman. According to court documents Mark Soliz was in the middle of an eight day crime spree when he shot and killed sixty one year old Nancy Weatherly. During the same crime spree Mark Soliz would murder another person however it was for Nancy Weatherly that he received the death penalty. Mark Soliz would be executed by lethal injection on September 10, 2019.

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A Texas death row inmate was executed Tuesday night for fatally shooting a 61-year-old grandmother at her North Texas home nearly a decade ago during an eight-day spate of crimes that included thefts and another killing. Mark Anthony Soliz, 37, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

He was convicted of the June 2010 slaying of Nancy Weatherly during a robbery at her rural home near Godley, located 30 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

Soliz was the 15th inmate put to death this year in the U.S. It was the sixth execution in Texas and the second in as many weeks in the state. Nine more executions are scheduled this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state.

State and federal appeals courts and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down requests by Soliz’s attorneys to stop his execution, with the most recent denial coming on Monday. His lawyers filed no other appeals, including to the U.S. Supreme Court, on Tuesday.

“I have represented Mr. Soliz for many years. Every legal tool in my kit was deployed to prevent this execution. The hope endures, the fight goes on, and the cause never dies,” Seth Kretzer, one of Soliz’s appellate attorneys, said in a statement.

Soliz’s lawyers had argued he suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which left him with brain damage. His attorneys said the disorder is the “functional equivalent” of conditions already recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as disqualifying exemptions to the death penalty, such as intellectual disability.

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“Our argument (was) the Supreme Court is extending that doctrine to fetal alcohol syndrome,” Kretzer said.

Prosecutors portrayed Soliz as a dangerous individual who killed Weatherly for a “pittance of property.”

Kretzer had argued in court documents that heavy drinking by Soliz’s mother during her pregnancy resulted in numerous problems for the inmate, including impulsivity, learning difficulties, and an IQ of 75 that is “considered borderline impaired.” An IQ of 70 or below is generally considered to be intellectually disabled.

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, combined with a chaotic and troubled childhood that included living with drugs and prostitution, left Soliz entering “adult life ill-prepared,” Kretzer wrote.

Jurors at his 2012 trial as well as previous appeals court rulings rejected Soliz’s claims that his actions were due to the impacts of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

At his trial, prosecutors said Soliz and another man, Jose Ramos, committed at least 13 crimes in the Fort Worth area over eight days in June 2010.

After fatally shooting a deliveryman around 6 a.m. on June 29, 2010, the duo later that morning drove in a stolen car to Weatherly’s home. Prosecutors say Soliz and Ramos forced their way into the home at gunpoint and ransacked the place, taking a television, cellphones and credit cards.

Prosecutors say Weatherly begged for her life and pleaded that Soliz not take her deceased mother’s jewelry box before she was shot in the back of the head.

A friend of Soliz’s told jurors Soliz had bragged to her about killing an “old lady” in a house in Godley, had laughed about the incident and ridiculed the lady’s “country” accent.

Police say Soliz confessed to killing Weatherly and ballistics and fingerprint evidence also tied him to the slaying.

Ramos was sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of Weatherly and the deliveryman, Ruben Martinez.

The Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of mentally disabled people but has given states some discretion to decide how to determine intellectual disability. However, justices have wrestled with how much discretion to allow.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office said in court documents filed earlier this month that the Supreme Court has not held that individuals with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder are exempt from capital punishment and that Soliz has not presented an expert opinion stating he is intellectually disabled.

The attorney general’s office said in its motion with the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals that a Fort Worth police detective testified Soliz was “more sophisticated, calculated, and dangerous” than his partner Ramos and that “Soliz was the most dangerous person with whom he had come into contact” in his 16 years as a police officer.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-execution-today-mark-anthony-soliz-killed-61-year-old-grandmother-eight-day-crime-spree-2019-09-10/

Billy Crutsinger Texas Execution

Billy Crutsinger was executed by the State of Texas for the murders of two elderly women. According to court documents Billy Crutsinger would break into the home and murder Pearl Magouirk and her daughter, Patricia Syren. The two women who were aged 89 and 71 years old were found dead two days later. Billy Crutsinger would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Billy Crutsinger would be executed by lethal injection on September 4, 2019

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In 2003, an 89-year-old woman and her 71-year-old daughter were stabbed to death in their Fort Worth home. On Wednesday, Texas executed Billy Crutsinger for the crime.

Crutsinger was sentenced to death for the home robbery and slayings of Pearl Magouirk and her daughter, Patricia Syren. The two women were found two days after their murders, and police tracked Crutsinger to a Galveston bar using Syren’s credit card, according to court records.

In Tarrant County, Assistant Criminal District Attorney and lead prosecutor Michele Hartmann said Tuesday the loss of the mother and daughter “is still felt deeply by their family and the Fort Worth community.”

After his last appeals were denied by the U.S. Supreme Court just minutes before his execution was scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., Crutsinger, 64, was strapped to a gurney in the death chamber in Huntsville. No relatives of the women were present to witness the execution, according to a prison spokesman. Crutsinger had three friends in the viewing room, who, in his final words, he thanked for coming and supporting other death row inmates. Into the microphone hanging above his head, he said the system “is not completely right,” but he was at peace and was going to be with Jesus and his family.

“I am going to miss those pancakes and those old time black and white shows,” he said. “Where I am going everything will be in color.”

Crutsinger was then injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 6:27 p.m., and pronounced dead 13 minutes later, according to the prison department. He was the fifth person executed in Texas this year and the 14th in the country.

After the murders, Crutsinger was arrested — albeit illegally — after he didn’t identify himself to police in Galveston. He consented to a DNA swab that linked him to the crime scene and confessed to the murders while in custody, the records state.

A judge ruled that police were not justified in arresting Crutsinger on the spot for credit card abuse because they didn’t have a warrant, and he didn’t commit the crime of failure to identify himself before his arrest. Still, despite the illegal arrest, the judge found his confession and DNA sample were admissible evidence in court because the police conduct was not “purposeful or flagrant,” and there was probable cause for his arrest, just not a warrant.

During his nearly 16 years on death row, Crutsinger appealed his sentence arguing against the legal validity of his confession and DNA sample. But more recently, he pointed to his lawyers’ failings.

Crutsinger argued that his trial lawyer failed to adequately investigate mitigating factors that could have swayed the jury to hand down a sentence of life in prison instead of execution. Specifically, he claimed the attorney overlooked evidence of mental impairment caused by alcohol addiction, head trauma, depression and low intelligence, according to a recent federal district court ruling.

His most recent lawyer, Lydia Brandt, had also knocked his state appellate lawyer — claiming his incompetence and the courts’ refusal to grant investigatory funding kept Crutsinger from any meaningful appeals process. She noted that a judge in another capital case found Crutsinger’s state appellate lawyer “sloppy” and lacking professionalism, and that his filings were “poorly done and of minimal assistance to the court,” according to Crutsinger’s petition.

“The State of Texas denied Mr. Crutsinger his initial right to one full and fair opportunity to present his claims concerning violations of his fundamental constitutional rights,” Brandt wrote in a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court last week.

Brandt did not respond to The Texas Tribune on Tuesday.

The federal courts, as well as the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, rejected his arguments. U.S. District Court Judge Terry Means ruled last month that despite a lack of funding for Crutsinger to investigate it, Means fully addressed the merits of the ineffective counsel claim and found it was without merit. He referred to trial records that revealed the lawyer presenting multiple witnesses at the phase of trial where jurors weigh questions that lead to life in prison or death, including prison officers who testified to his good behavior and family members who described his grief and issues with drinking.

According to the testimony of his ex-wife and wife at the time of trial, Crutsinger had lost a newborn daughter; his toddler son to drowning; his teenage son to lymphoma; his brother from illness; his father, who was hit by a car; and his sister, who was killed in a car crash in which he was driving.

“The assertions that the denial of funding precluded a true merits review and that trial counsel’s representation was egregious, border on frivolous,” Means wrote. “… His conclusion that trial counsel failed to explore his alcoholism, his ‘personality change’ after a single drink, his history of domestic violence and abuse, and his repeated losses of significant friends and relatives, is completely false.”

Earlier rulings in Crutsinger’s case from the federal district court and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have been highlighted by the U.S. Supreme Court, though, when pointing out that the appellate court overly limited investigatory funding. Although the courts reexamined the case and still denied funding and declined to reopen the case for further review, one appellate judge split from his court’s ruling.

Judge James Graves on the 5th Circuit court said last week he would stop Wednesday’s execution. He said earlier that Means’ ruling on the merits of Crutsinger’s claim came before he had any funds to further investigate the issue, so it was not yet developed for such a ruling.

“The court concluded that Crutsinger must prove his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel to be able to establish that ‘investigative, expert, or other services are reasonably necessary’ to then be able to prove his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel,” Graves wrote in a dissent in July. “Such a circular application is illogical … . A defendant who has already proven his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel would have no need for additional investigative, expert, or other services.”

There are 10 other Texas executions scheduled through December.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/09/04/billy-crutsinger-execution-texas/

Larry Swearingen Texas Execution

Larry Swearingen was executed by the State of Texas for the sexual assault and murder of a college student in 1998. According to court documents Larry Swearingen would abduct, sexually assault and murder 19 year old Melissa Trotter. Larry Swearingen lawyers argued that their client was cleared from the brutal murder due to DNA however the supreme court felt differently. Larry Swearingen would be executed by lethal injection on August 22, 2019

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A Texas man with a history of violence against women was put to death Wednesday for the abduction, rape and murder of a suburban Houston community college student over 20 years ago.

Larry Swearingen, 48, who argued his conviction was based on junk science, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the December 1998 killing of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter.

She was last seen leaving her community college in Conroe, and her body turned up nearly a month later in a forest near Huntsville, about 70 miles north of Houston.

Swearingen, who had always maintained his innocence in Trotter’s death, was the 12th inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the fourth in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Eleven more executions are scheduled in Texas this year

Prosecutors said they stood behind the “mountain of evidence” used to convict Swearingen in 2000. They described him as a sociopath with a criminal history of violence against women and said he even tried to get a fellow death row inmate to take the blame for his crime.

Swearingen had long tried to cast doubt on the evidence used to convict him, particularly claims by prosecution experts that Trotter’s body had been in the woods for 25 days. His longtime appellate attorney, James Rytting, said at least five defense experts concluded her body was there for no more than 14 days, and because Swearingen had been arrested by then on outstanding traffic violations, he couldn’t have left her body there.

Swearingen, who also was represented by the Innocence Project, had previously received five stays of execution. He was put to death after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal, which focused on allegations prosecutors used “false and misleading testimony” related to blood evidence and a piece of pantyhose used to strangle Trotter.

Kelly Blackburn, the trial bureau chief for the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Swearingen, said the killer’s efforts to discredit the evidence were unsuccessful because his experts’ opinions didn’t “hold water.”

“I have absolutely zero doubt that anybody but Larry Swearingen killed … Melissa Trotter,” he said.

Blackburn said Swearingen killed Trotter because he was angry that she had stood him up for a date. At the time of Trotter’s killing, Swearingen was under indictment for kidnapping a former fiancée.

“Lord, forgive them,” Swearingen said after the warden asked if he had a final statement. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Then as the lethal dose of pentobarbital began, he said he could “hear it” going into a vein in his arm, then that he could taste it.

“It’s actually burning in my right arm. I don’t feel anything in the left arm,” he said.

Almost immediately, he took a short breath, then started to snore quietly. He stopped moving.

He never opened his eyes and never looked at the witnesses who were there on his victim’s behalf, including her parents, who watched through a window just a few feet from him.

At 6:47 p.m. CT — 12 minutes after the lethal dose started — Swearingen was pronounced dead.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-executes-man-with-history-of-violence-against-women-for-1998-slaying-of-college-student

John King Texas Execution

John King was executed by the Texas Government for a brutal racial murder. According to court documents John King and two other men would tie James Byrd to the bumper of a truck and dragged the man at high speeds causing his death. John King and Lawrence Brewer would be sentenced to death Shawn Berry would receive life sentences. John King would be executed by lethal injection on April 24, 2019. Lawrence Brewer was executed in 2011

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A man who helped carry out the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. – one of the most horrific hate crimes in modern American history – was executed by injection on Wednesday evening in a Texas prison.

John William King, 44, was one of three men convicted for the murder. He is the second person to die for the crime that made news around the world and helped inspire Congress to pass federal hate crime legislation.

King was pronounced dead at 7:08 p.m. (8:08 p.m. ET) at Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville.

According to Jeremy Desel with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, King had his eyes closed and replied “No” to the warden when asked whether he had any last words.

King did give a written statement that said, “Capital Punishment: Them without the capital get the punishment.”

Desel said the execution was delayed because the case went to the US Supreme Court before moving ahead at 6:56 p.m.

Clara Byrd Taylor said while watching her brother’s killer die she felt nothing.

“There was no sense of relief,” she said.

She called the execution a “just punishment.”

King showed no remorse, not Wednesday, not ever, she said.

The killer had his eyes closed the entire time he was on the gurney, Desel said, and only moved once, taking one deep breath as the execution started.

Byrd’s acquaintances told police they’d seen Byrd, who was black, at a party the night of June 6, 1998, that he’d left around 2 a.m. and was later seen riding in the bed of a pickup with three white men in the cab.

Authorities said King, Lawrence Russell Brewer and Shawn Berry picked up Byrd and drove him to a secluded area where they beat him and spray-painted his face before tying a logging chain around his ankles and dragging him behind a pickup truck for almost 3 miles.

Brewer died by injection in 2011. Berry was sentenced to life in prison and is eligible for parole in 2038.

While most murders are brutal, the viciousness of Byrd’s killing shocked the world. NBA star Dennis Rodman came forward to pay for Byrd’s funeral. Filmmakers produced multiple documentaries. Artists including Geto Boys, Drive-By Truckers and Will Smith referenced the violent saga in their songs. Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton penned an ode to Byrd.

Most importantly, the 49-year-old’s slaying spurred Texas and Congress to push through hate crime legislation. The federal act is often associated with the killing of Matthew Shepard, a gay student beaten to death in Wyoming, but the full name of the law is the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

King had long maintained his innocence, once sending a letter to the Dallas Morning News that would later be used against him. He had said the evidence presented in his case was circumstantial and that Berry was solely responsible for Byrd’s death.

King has repeatedly appealed his guilty verdict, claiming ineffective assistance from his counsel, but a federal appeals court upheld his conviction last year, and the US Supreme Court declined to hear his case in October.

hough the motive was never specifically outlined, race was a theme in King’s trial. Prosecutors presented evidence that King had been an “exalted cyclops” of the white supremacist Confederate Knights of America and regularly drew lynching scenes.

King was the third prisoner executed in Texas this year, after cop killer Robert Mitchell Jennings and triple murderer Billie Wayne Coble.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/24/us/james-byrd-killer-execution-john-william-king/index.html