The 9th Execution of 2018
Texas executed Erick Davila on April 26, 2018. He was convicted of opening fire
at a children’s birthday party in 2008, believing a rival gang member was
present and fatally shooting a woman and her 5-year-old granddaughter in a
spray of bullets, reported Reuters..
Davila, 31, died by lethal injection at Texas’
execution chamber in Huntsville, a prisons official said.
It was the ninth execution this year in the United States,
and the 550th in Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death
penalty in 1976, the most of any state. Texas has put five inmates to death
this year.
“I might have lost the fight but I’m still a soldier. I
still love you all. To my supporters and family, y’all hold it down,” Davila
was quoted by prisons officials as saying in his last statement.
Prosecutors said Davila was a member of the Bloods street
gang and drove by the party in Fort Worth, believing that members of the rival
Crips gang were there.
Using a semiautomatic rifle with a laser scope, he fired
numerous shots into the group while attendees were eating cake and ice cream at
the “Hannah Montana”-themed party for a girl, killing Annette Stevenson, 48,
and her granddaughter, Queshawn Stevenson, court documents showed.
He also wounded three other children and one woman,
according to the documents.
It took jurors about four hours to convict Davila at his
trial in 2009.
Texas said he confessed to the killings and told
investigators he intended to “have a shoot-‘em-up” and kill the father of
Queshawn Stevenson, a rival gang member who was not injured in the attack.
Davila’s lawyers had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt
the execution, arguing in a last-minute appeal that prosecutors in his trial
violated a court decision by hiding evidence favorable to the defense of Davila
being high on drugs at the time of the shootings.
They also said it was inappropriate for his former trial
judge, now the prosecuting attorney, to seek his execution date.
The court rejected the appeal without providing details,
issuing its decision less than 15 minutes before the planned execution time.
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