The 6th Execution of 2016
Gustavo Julian Garcia was executed in Texas on February 16, 2016. He was 43. Garcia spent 24 years on death row, according to the Texas Tribune.
Garcia was sentenced to death in 1992 after confessing to
the murders of two clerks during separate robberies, according to court
documents.
At 6:10 p.m., witnesses shuffled from the clear, warm night
into the death house, where Garcia was already strapped to a gurney. He was
asked if he had any last words.
“Yes, sir,” he replied. “To my family, to my mom, I love
you. God bless you, stay strong.”
A lethal dose of pentobarbital began streaming into the IV
already inserted into his tattooed arm. Garcia, in prison whites and
black-rimmed glasses, looked straight at the ceiling with a calm expression on
his face. A minute later, he yawned and his eyelids drooped. At 6:26 p.m., he
was pronounced dead.
It was the third execution in Texas this year, and the sixth
in the United States.
In December 1990, Garcia, 18 at the time, and 15-year-old
Christopher Vargas entered a liquor store with a sawed-off shotgun, according
to court documents. They stole money and beer, and Garcia shot the clerk, Craig
Turski, in the stomach and head.
The two weren’t arrested until a month later, when they were
caught at a Texaco where another clerk, 18-year-old Gregory Martin, had been
shot and killed. Garcia confessed to the murders, and he was sentenced to death
for Turski’s death in January 1992, according to court documents. He was never
tried in Martin’s case.
Martin’s sister, brother-in-law and friend attended Garcia’s
execution. No one related to Turski was there. Garcia’s spiritual advisor,
Father Clifton Labbe, stood at the front of the viewing area and stared at
Garcia’s face.
Garcia’s long stretch on death row wasn’t uneventful. More
than six years into his sentence, on Thanksgiving night 1998, Garcia took part
in an escape attempt that ended with the death of another death row inmate,
Martin Gurule, according to
the Dallas Morning News.
The inmates crept under a fence, climbed a roof and sprinted
across the prison yard, the Morning News reported. Garcia and five other
inmates surrendered on the lawn after guards began shooting at them, but Gurule
managed to get over the outer fence. He was found dead a week later, apparently
drowned in a nearby creek.
About two years later, then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn discovered
that psychologist Walter Quijano, who testified at Garcia’s original sentencing
trial, had claimed in testimony that Hispanics were more likely to pose a
future danger to society, according to court documents. Quijano said he came to
that belief because Hispanics were overrepresented in the prison population.
Garcia and several other inmates whose death sentences had
been influenced by Quijano's improper testimony were granted new sentencing
trials, but Garcia was again sentenced to death in 2001, according to the
attorney general’s office.
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