US Executions | My Crime Library

Charles Milton Texas Execution

Charles Milton was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of a store clerk during a robbery. According to court documents Charles Milton was robbing a liquor store when he shot and killed the owner. Charles Milton would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Charles Milton was executed by lethal injection on May 25 1985

Charles Milton More News

Charles Milton, convicted of murdering a liquor store owner during a robbery, was executed by injection today after last-minute appeals to Gov. Mark White and the U.S. Supreme Court failed.

Milton, 34, of Fort Worth, who converted to Islam while in prison, used his final statement while strapped to a Texas Department of Corrections gurney to pray to Allah and to urge his ″brothers and sisters to be strong.″

He was sentenced to death for the slaying eight years and one day ago of Fort Worth liquor store owner Menaree Denton, who was shot in the heart while she and her husband, Leonard, struggled with Milton during an aborted robbery

Defense attorneys contended the shooting was an accident.

The legal scramble through the state and federal courts climaxed at 1 a.m. with word that the Supreme Court had refused to act. White, as has been his custom, then rejected the petition for a reprieve.

Milton, with needles inserted into his arms to carry the lethal drugs, had little reaction and died peacefully. His only deliberate movement as the drugs entered his system was to nod to his brother-in-law, Joseph Smith, one of five personal witnesses he selected.

He was pronounced dead at 1:33 a.m., becoming the fourth Texas prison inmate this year and eighth overall to be executed since the state resumed the death penalty in 1982.

In a two-page typewritten statement released late Monday, Milton said he suffered many sleepless nights for the crime.

″I am sorry Mrs. Denton was killed in the struggle over the gun, but I didn’t even know Mrs. Denton was dead until several days later,″ he wrote. He said her husband was as much to blame because of the struggle for the weapon.

Milton’s written statement asked Allah for forgiveness. But he also criticized his attorneys for the handling of his case, saying he learned more about it through newspapers or the radio than from them.

″My final words are to my mother,″ the statement said. ″I have lived my last years as a Muslim. I die as a Muslim and I would like to be buried as a Muslim. I have no hard feeling to anyone in this world.″

He signed his statement as ″Hakeem Saboor Rahim a.k.a. Charles Milton.″

Earlier Monday he met with two sisters, his ex-wife and four children

″He would have been all right if he hadn’t got involved with dope,″ said Helen Milton, his former wife, who said he had a $600-a-day drug addiction. ″He did the best he could, and two weeks before the incident he was talking about how he was clean and going to move back in.″

Today’s death date was Milton’s third. Two earlier dates had been stayed. He had been on Death Row more than six years.

https://apnews.com/article/baeb3eca846c5d53d8d904724f7092c8

Marvin Francois Florida Execution

Marvin Francois was executed by the State of Florida for the murders of six people. According to court documents Marvin Francois would enter a drug house and open fire killing six people. Marvin Francois would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Marvin Francois would be executed by way of the electric chair on May 29 1985

Marvin Francois More News

Former heroin addict Marvin Francois died in the electric chair today for the 1977 execution-style slayings of an alleged drug dealer and five other people.

Francois, 39, was pronounced dead shortly after 7 a.m. EDT from a 2,000-volt surge of electricity in Florida’s ‘Old Sparky’ wooden electric chair. He spent his final hours alone early today after embracing his mother and children one last time.

He ate a hearty last meal of shrimp, lobster tail, barbecued spare ribs, chicken breast, watermelon, strawberries, sliced tomatoes and french fries in his Florida State Prison cell at 4:30 a.m.

The convicted killer, who refused the services of a clergyman, became the 12th person executed in the United States this year, the 44th since the Supreme Court lifted its ban on capital punishment in 1976.

About 25 anti-death penalty protesters and two people favoring executions marched outside the prison in rural northern Florida.

Prison spokesman Vernon Bradford said Francois was allowed visitors from 8 p.m. until midnight through a glass partition. At midnight his mother, girlfriend and twin teenage children were allowed a ‘contact’ visit.

The condemned man’s mother, Muriel Hollingsworth, and girlfriend, Juanita Pace, of Miami, accompanied his son Aleasian and daughter Alexis to the prison.

Francois did not receive a last-minute visit from his 37-year-old brother Kerry, of Miami. The brother was paroled from the Florida State Prison in 1980 after serving 16 years of a life sentence for murder.

Francois had been scheduled to die Tuesday morning but won a temporary stay from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Tuesday night, however, the Supreme Court turned down his final request for a stay.

He was sentenced to die for the July 27, 1977, murder of six people and the wounding of two others at a northwest Miami house believed the headquarters of a drug ring.

At a 1982 clemency board hearing, Francois’ attorney said he had become helpless because of heroin addiction and was framed by ‘scanty and unreliable’ evidence.

Prosecutors contended Francois was hired by a drug dealer to kill a competitor and the other victims were shot because his face mask slipped and he feared they could identify him.

Police said the victims were forced to lie face down and then shot in the head. Francois was identified as the gunman by a survivor, an accomplice and by his common-law wife.

But assistant public defender Rory Stein said Francois was a victim of a cruel childhood. He said as a boy Francois was forced to live on the streets of New Orleans because his father was a drug addict, his mother a prostitute.

‘Mr. Francois has had a difficult and hard life,’ Stein said. ‘He is a weak man.’

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/05/29/Former-heroin-addict-Marvin-Francois-died-in-the-electric/6564486187200/

Jesse de la Rosa Texas Execution

Jesse De La Rosa was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of store clerk during a robbery. According to court documents Jesse De La Rose would fatally shoot Masaoud Ghazali during a robbery. Jesse De La Rosa would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Jesse De La Rosa would be executed by lethal injection on May 15 1985

Jesse De La Rosa More News

Jesse de la Rosa, telling his stepmother he loved her and asking forgiveness for his sins, was executed by lethal injection early today for killing a convenience store clerk for six cans of beer in 1979.

Mr. de la Rosa, 24 years old, was pronounced dead at 12:17 A.M., four minutes after injections in both arms. He was the 11th person executed in this country this year and the 43d put to death since the Supreme Court reinstituted capital punishment in 1976.

Mr. de la Rosa was executed for the slaying of Masaoud Ghazali, a former Iranian Air Force captain who was shot twice in the head in a robbery of a San Antonio 7-Eleven store.

He made his final statement staring at the ceiling, telling his stepmother, Carmen, who was in the death chamber, ”I love you.’

”God forgive my brothers and sisters for sins I have committed,” Mr. de la Rosa said in Spanish.

They Both Speak to Him

Mr. de la Rosa’s stepmother, who was accompanied by the condemned man’s father, Luciano, replied in English, ”You’ll never die because you’ll always be in my memories.”

His father added, in Spanish, ”God forgive my son.”

Mr. de la Rosa then added, ”God, I give my life for my brothers and sisters.”

When he gasped and buckled, his stepmother began sobbing. She was comforted by his father, who was also in tears. The couple left the prison without further comment.

The execution, the third carried out this year by the Texas Department of Corrections, came after two days of unsuccessful appeals. Late Tuesday the Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 to deny him new hearings. Then Gov. Mark White, as he in previous death sentences, refused to grant a 30-day reprieve.

He Receives Communion

After a steak dinner, Jesse de la Rosa spoke by telephone for 20 minutes to a longtime friend, Margie Garcia of San Antonio, and shortly after 8 P.M. he received communion from a prison priest, the Rev. Stephen Walsh.

It was the second death date for Mr. de la Rosa, who said in an interview a week ago that he had been coerced into confessing the slaying. He refused, however, to identify another killer.

A store clerk shot earlier the same night in a $40 robbery identified Mr. de la Rosa, who was 18 at the time. Mr. de la Rosa has said he had been drinking and smoking marijuana that night but was at a friend’s house when Mr. Ghazali was walked to the back of the store to a cooler and was shot twice in the head.

Asked if the execution relieved her, Mr. Ghazali’s wife, Gloria, replied, ”It does,” then hung up the telephone.

A second man involved in the crime spree, Alejandro Alcorta Garcia, 28, is serving a life sentence for aggravated robbery

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/16/us/prisoner-in-texas-dies-for-murder.html

John Young Georgia Execution

John Young was executed by the State of Georgia for a triple murder. According to court documents John Young would break into the home of the victims and would beat to death three elderly people Coleman Brice, Gladys Brice, and Katie Davis. John Young would also attack three others in the home. John Young would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. John Young would be executed by way of electric chair on March 20 1985

John Young More News

The sister of triple murderer John C. Young, who died early Wednesday in Georgia’s electric chair, said he faced his execution calmly and his only concern was for the welfare of his brothers and sisters.

Katie Young Vasser, who spent more than three hours with the condemned man Tuesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center, said he read the Bible and expressed hope that his four sisters and three brothers would comfort each other after his death.

Young, 28, spent nine years on death row for murdering three elderly Macon residents during a 1974 rampage. Coleman Brice, 85, his wife Gladys, 83, and Katie Davis, 83, were beaten and kicked to death in their homes.

Three other elderly residents of Young’s racially mixed neighborhood were seriously injured in similar attacks. All six were white.

Young is the sixth man, and the fifth black, to be executed in Georgia since the state resumed using the electric chair in 1983 after a 19-year suspension.

Mrs. Vasser, who lives near Houston, Texas, said her brother never acknowledged the murders.

″I don’t think he knows,″ she said, adding that he was ″real, real out on drugs″ when the attacks occurred.

Mrs. Vasser and another sister, Annie Duncan of Milledgeville, were among Young’s last visitors Tuesday.

″We read the Bible, we cried and when we left he had a smile on his face,″ Mrs. Vasser said in a telephone interview. ″He had peace within … and, having come to know Christ, he was calm.″

No representatives of the victims’ families were at the prison for the execution.

Young’s attorneys filed numerous last-minute appeals based on the admission of his trial lawyer that he was under the influence of drugs while representing Young. But Young’s last chance for a stay vanished Tuesday evening when the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his appeal request by 5-3.

About four hours later, Young was escorted into the execution chamber and strapped into the varnished wooden chair by six guards.

In a barely audible final statement delivered to 12 official witnesses, Young complained that poor people and blacks were ″pawns of society.″

″Being born black in America was against me,″ he said. ″Y’all cry that America was built on Christianity, I say it was built on slavery.″

At 12:15 a.m., Warden Ralph Kemp read the court’s execution order and two guards placed a leather harness over Young’s shaved head, while two others attached electrodes to his right leg and head.

Then, with a leather mask over his face, 1,080 volts of electricity was applied.

Two minutes later the current was turned off and his body was allowed to cool for six minutes before two doctors pronounced him dead.

Outside the central Georgia prison, about 30 death penalty opponents staged a 45-minute vigil, holding candles and singing hymns.

About 20 people demonstrated in favor of the execution, including Ed Stephens, grand dragon of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan, and two other robed Klansmen. The two groups were separated by a barbed wire fence.

https://apnews.com/article/3618d56eb2dfb6d1c53cf6cbc8b47bb8

Stephen Morin Texas Execution

Stephen Morin was a serial killer who was executed by the State of Texas for numerous murders of young girls and boys. According to court documents Stephen Morin was responsible for the murders of forty young women and seven men in the 1970s and 1980s. Stephen Morin would be convicted and sentenced to death. Stephen Morin would be executed by lethal injection on March 13 1985

Stephen Morin More News

Stephen Peter Morin, a Christian convert three times condemned for murdering young women, accepted his death sentence without resistance and was executed early Wednesday, ending his life with a prayer.

Morin, 34, was pronounced dead at 12:55 a.m. CST, after medics spent nearly an hour trying to find a vein to accept the tube carrying a lethal cocktail of drugs.

Morin was executed for the Dec. 11, 1981, shooting death of Carrie Marie Scott, 21, outside a San Antonio restaurant.

He was also under death sentences for the Dec. 3, 1981, slaying of Janna Bruce, 21, in Corpus Christi, Texas, and for the November 1981 killing of Denver waitress Sheila Ann Whalen, 23.

Morin was strapped to a gurney at 12:03 a.m. CST, offering no resistance. Medics, who said his veins were ‘shot’ by drug use, probed for a vein until 12:44 a.m. CST, when a saline solution was injected into his arm, said Texas Department of Corrections spokesman Charles Brown.

Morin’s final statement was a prayer for forgiveness.

‘Father forgive these people,’ he said, ‘for they know not what they do. Forgive them as you have forgiven me and I have forgiven them.’

His last words were: ‘Lord Jesus, I commit my soul to you.’

Morin then blew a kiss to a woman witness. As the poison flowed into his veins, Morin drew one deep breath, his last.

State District Judge David Berchelmann in San Antonio and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin had earlier denied motions by Gerald Goldstein, general counsel for the Texas Civil Liberties Union, to stay the execution.

Morin is the 40th convict executed in the United States and the sixth in Texas since the Supreme Court lifted its ban on capital punishment in 1976.

Morin, who began a fast out of religious motivation Tuesday, requested bread without yeast for his last meal.

The former cocaine addict and drifter from Providence, R.I., said he was converted to Christianity by his last kidnap victim who played tapes by the Rev. Kenneth Copeland, a Texas evangelist.

Morin had asked that no appeals be made to stop his death but Goldstein questioned his mental competence.

‘I am not asking for a stay. If one is granted, I will take it,’ prison spokesman Phil Guthrie told Goldstein Tuesday night.

On a 36-minute trip Tuesday morning from death row to the downtown Huntsville prison where the execution chamber is located, Morin ‘appeared to be in good spirits,’ Guthrie said.

‘At one point he jokingly asked the group if they’d like to stop and go fishing,’ Guthrie said.

Prison Warden Jack Pursley quoted Morin as saying his fate was ‘in the hands of the Lord.’

Morin claimed he was converted to Christianity by kidnap victim Margaret Mayfield Palm. She testified that after Morin abducted her at gunpoint to escape police hunting him for Scott’s murder, they drove around for 10 hours reading from her handwritten journal of Bible verses and listening to tapes by Copeland.

Morin was arrested at bus station after he freed Palm and she told police he planned to take a bus to Fort Worth to surrender to Copeland, an evangelist the prisoner asked to witness the execution.

Morin was on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list when he was arrested. A federal fugitive warrant charged him with the 1976 kidnapping and rape of a 14-year-old San Francisco girl. He also was a suspect in several rapes, abductions and murders of young women in Las Vegas, Utah, Indiana, California and New York.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/03/13/Stephen-Peter-Morin-a-Christian-convert-three-times-condemned/8207479538000/