Condemned Texas prisoner's last words: 'Go Cowboys'

The 12th Execution of 2012

A Texas man, Jesse Hernandez,  was executed last week by lethal injection for beating a 10-month-old boy to death in Dallas in 2001, according to Reuters.
Hernandez was babysitting 10-month-old Karlos Borja and Karlos' 4-year-old sister while their mother was at work when he assaulted both children. The girl survived injuries to her face and head, but her brother died a week after the beating.
Hernandez, a convicted child sex offender, said in a written statement that the children "were being very bad by crying a lot for nothing" and that he "just exploded and hit them with the back of my hand not realizing that I was hurting them," according to a summary by the Texas attorney general's office of the evidence presented at trial, reported Reuters.
During an interview with police, Hernandez said that he might have hit Karlos with a flashlight, but that was not part of the written statement, the summary said. Karlos' sister told police that "Jesse" hit her and her brother with a flashlight, according to a Dallas Morning News article in 2001.
Hernandez told the Morning News that police forced him to sign a confession (though police said that the confession was voluntary). "I didn't do it," Hernandez said, according to the Morning News. "I didn't hurt them like that."
Hernandez, 47, was the fourth person executed this year in Texas and the 12th inmate put to death this year in the United States. Texas executed 13 people in 2011 and has put to death more than four times as many people as any other state since the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
"God bless everyone; continue to walk with God," Hernandez said as part of his final statement, according to Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Clark said Hernandez also yelled "Go Cowboys," an apparent reference to the Dallas Cowboys football team, reported Reuters.
To read more:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-execution-texasbre82r1ll-20120328,0,1509682.story