Texas executes man who claimed racial bias

 The 6th Execution of 2023

John Balentine, 54, convicted of killing three teenagers while they slept in a Texas Panhandle home more than 25 years ago was executed on February 8, 2023, the sixth inmate to be put to death in the U.S. this year and the second in as many days, reported The Associated Press.

Balentine's attorneys argued that his trial was marred by racial bias. He received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, for the January 1998 shooting deaths of Edward Mark Caylor, 17, Kai Brooke Geyer, 15, and Steven Watson, 15, at a home in Amarillo. Prosecutors said all three were shot once in the head as they slept.

Balentine appeared jovial as witnesses were entering the death chamber, asking if someone standing near the gurney could remove the sheet covering the lower two-thirds of his body “and massage my feet.” Then he chuckled.

After a brief prayer from a spiritual adviser who held Balentine’s left foot with his right hand, the prisoner gave a short statement thanking friends for supporting him. Then he turned his head to look through a window at seven relatives of his three murder victims and apologized.

“I hope you can find in your heart to forgive me,” he said.

The mothers of each of the three victims were among the witnesses a few feet from him.

He took two breaths as the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began flowing through intravenous needles in his arms, snored twice, yawned and began snoring again loudly. The snores — 11 of them —became progressively quieter, then stopped.

At 6:36 p.m., 15 minutes after the drugs began, a physician pronounced him dead. The victims’ witnesses then shared high-fives before leaving the death chamber. They declined to speak with reporters afterward.

Caylor’s sister, who was among the witnesses watching him die, was Balentine’s former girlfriend, and prosecutors said the shootings stemmed from a feud between Caylor and Balentine. Ballentine, however, argued that Caylor and others had threatened his life over his interracial relationship. Balentine is Black. The three victims were white.

Balentine confessed to the murders. One of his trial attorneys said Balentine turned down a plea agreement that would have sentenced him to life in prison because the racists threats he received made him afraid of being attacked or killed while incarcerated.

Lawyers were pursuing two legal strategies to save their client before he was executed. The first was to argue that his trial and sentencing were tainted by racism. But Balentine was also among five Texas death row inmates who sued to stop the state’s prison system from using what they allege are expired and unsafe execution drugs. Despite a civil court judge in Austin preliminarily agreeing with the claims, the state’s top two courts have now allowed three of the five inmates participating in the lawsuit to be executed. Robert Fratta, 65, was put to death Jan. 10 and Wesley Ruiz, 43, on Feb. 1.

Prison officials said the state’s supply of execution drugs is safe.

Separately, Balentine’s attorneys alleged the jury foreman in his case, Dory England, held racist views and used racial slurs during his life and bullied other jurors who had wanted to sentence Balentine to a life sentence into changing their minds. Lola Perkins, who had been married to England’s brother, told Balentine’s attorneys that England “was racist against Black people because that is how he was raised.”

England, in a declaration before his death in 2021, said he pushed for Balentine’s death sentence because he worried if the accused was ever released that England himself “would need to hunt him down.” However, England also said he threatened to report another juror to the judge for making prejudiced comments when the person “started going off about this Black guy killing these white teenagers.”

Balentine’s attorneys also alleged prosecutors prevented all prospective Black jurors from serving at the trial and that Balentine’s trial lawyers referred to the sentencing proceedings in a note as a “justifiable lynching.”

Randall Sherrod, one of Balentine’s trial attorneys, said Wednesday he could not remember the note but denied that he or the other attorney, James Durham Jr., had any racist attitudes toward Balentine. Durham died in 2006.

“I think he got a fair trial,” Sherrod said of Balentine. “I think we had a good jury. ... We tried to help John whatever way we could.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday declined an appeal from Balentine’s attorneys to halt the execution so that his claims of racial bias could be properly reviewed.

A defense request for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to temporarily stay the execution also failed and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied a request to stay Ballentine’s execution over allegations that “racism and racial issues pervaded” his trial. The appeals court denied the stay on procedural grounds without reviewing the merits.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously declined to commute Balentine’s death sentence to a lesser punishment or to grant a 30-day reprieve.

“Without a thorough judicial consideration of Mr. Balentine’s claims, we can have no confidence that the death verdict isn’t tainted by racial bias,” said Shawn Nolan, one of Balentine’s attorneys.

Potter County District Attorney Randall Sims, whose jurisdiction includes Amarillo, where the murders occurred, had pushed for the execution to go forward. On Monday he declined to comment ahead of the execution.

Koda Shadix, the younger brother of Geyer, one of the victims, said in a video posted online last week that he was upset by efforts to delay justice.

Balentine has “shown no remorse and absolutely does not care what he did. All he cares about is his life,” Shadix said.

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Missouri executes man for killing girlfriend and three children

 The 5th Execution of 2023

Missouri executed 58-year-old Leonard Taylor on February 7, 2023, who was convicted of killing his girlfriend and her three children at their home in Jennings nearly two decades ago, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

A state executioner delivered a fatal dose of pentobarbital at 6:07 p.m., and Taylor was pronounced dead a short time later, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.

“Muslims don’t die. We live eternally in the hearts of our family and friends,” Taylor wrote in his final statement following a verse from the Quran. “From Allah we come, and to Allah we all shall return. Everybody will get their turn to die.”

Taylor was the third person to be executed in Missouri in three months. His death marked only the second time since 2015 that more than one person was executed in a calendar year.

He was convicted in 2008 of killing 28-year-old Angela Rowe and her three children, Alexus Conley, 10, AcQreya Conley, 6, and Tyrese Conley, 5, at their home on Park Lane in Jennings. He has insisted he is innocent of the killings.

Rowe’s older sister, Gerjuan Rowe, attended Tuesday’s execution along with eight other loved ones.

“Justice was served,” Rowe said. “Now, I get a little peace.”

Rowe and her children were found Dec. 3, 2004. Rowe was covered by blankets and shot four times, once fatally in the head. The children were also shot and lined up on a bed.

Prosecutors said they believed the family was shot on the night of Nov. 23 or early morning of Nov. 24, 2004.

Taylor had called his brother just before midnight, then again at 12:05 a.m. Nov. 24, and admitted to the killings. The brother told police Taylor stayed in the house with the bodies because he was waiting for a letter from his wife in California.

On Nov. 26, Taylor’s sister-in-law drove him to the airport. She testified at trial she saw him drop a long-barreled revolver into a sewer before he left.

Taylor was arrested Dec. 9 in Kentucky in possession of fake IDs and pamphlets about creating a false identity, authorities said. Police later tested the sunglasses he wore that day and found blood that matched Rowe’s DNA.

A jury sentenced Taylor to death on Feb. 29, 2008, for the four murders.

Taylor had since filed several appeals, including a request last month asking St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell to hold a hearing to review discrepancies in the state’s evidence and consider new declarations from Taylor’s daughter and her mother saying Taylor was actually in Los Angeles at the time of the killings.

Bell denied that request last week, finding “the facts are not there to support a credible case of innocence.”

On Monday, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson denied Taylor’s petition for clemency.

“Leonard Taylor brutally murdered a mother and her three children. The evidence shows Taylor committed these atrocities and a jury found him guilty,” Parson said in a statement. “Despite his self-serving claim of innocence, the facts of his guilt in this gruesome quadruple homicide remain.”

Taylor, meanwhile, met with his three daughters, his sister, his two attorneys and a spiritual adviser.

On Tuesday morning at around 11 a.m., he ate a last meal of a seafood platter, cheeseburger, fries and a milkshake.

At 5:52 p.m., it was announced all pending appeals and petitions, including one before the U.S. Supreme Court, had been denied. At 6:06 p.m., the order for execution was given.

Taylor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m.

Afterward, Gerjuan Rowe reflected on the years waiting for Taylor’s death. She said it was painful to answer questions from investigators during his appeals and see his photo on her television screen.

She said she still missed her sister and her nieces and nephew and wondered what they would be like now as adults.

The execution, she said, gave her a bit of peace.

Still, “It’s not going to change nothing,” she said. “Not really.”

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Texas executes man for 2007 killing of police officer

The 4th Execution of 2023

Texas executed Wesley Ruiz  on February 1, 2023 for fatally shooting a Dallas police officer nearly 16 years ago after a high-speed chase, reported The Associated Press.

Ruiz, 43, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, for the March 2007 killing of Dallas Police Senior Corporal Mark Nix.

“I would like to apologize to Mark and the Nix family for taking him away from you,” Ruiz said as he was laying strapped to a gurney in the death chamber. “I hope this brings you closure.”

He never looked at Nix’s relatives and friends, including the slain officer’s mother and sister, who watched through a window a few feet from him. Ruiz thanked his family and friends for supporting him and urged his children to “stand tall and continue to make me proud.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m ready to fly,” he said. “All right warden, I’m ready to ride.”

As the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, he took two quick breaths, then began snoring. His 11th snore was his last and there was no further movement. Twenty-two minutes later, at 6:41 p.m., he was pronounced dead.

Immediately before his statement, a spiritual adviser standing near Ruiz offered a brief prayer. Outside the brick walls of the prison, a group of about a dozen pro-police motorcyclists sat on their bikes in a cold drizzle, revving their engines and nearly drowning out her words for those inside.

Ruiz was the second inmate put to death this year in Texas and the fourth in the U.S. Seven other executions are scheduled in Texas for later this year, including one next week.

Nearly 16 years ago Ruiz led officers on a high-speed chase after being spotted driving a car that matched the description of one used by a murder suspect. Authorities said Ruiz fired one shot at Nix when the officer tried to break the vehicle’s passenger window after the chase. The bullet hit Nix’s badge, splintered it and sent fragments into his neck, severing an artery. He later died at a hospital.

Nix, 33, a U.S. Navy veteran of Operation Desert Storm, had been on the Dallas force for nearly seven years and was engaged to be married when he was killed.

The U.S. Supreme Court earlier Wednesday declined an appeal from Ruiz’s attorneys to halt the execution. The defense had argued that jurors relied on “overtly racist” and “blatant anti-Hispanic stereotypes” in appraising whether Ruiz posed a future danger, an element needed to secure a death sentence in Texas. Ruiz was Hispanic.

In court documents filed late Tuesday with the Supreme Court, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said Ruiz’s claim of juror bias had no merit because a review of the allegations conducted last week by Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot found no such bias. One of the jurors accused of bias by Ruiz’s attorneys told Creuzot that, “I was not nor am not bias(ed) to anyone or any race,” according to the court filing.

Last week, U.S. District Judge David Godbey in Dallas denied a request to stay Ruiz’s execution, saying his attorneys failed to show that jurors had made statements during his trial showing “overt racial bias.” On Monday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals also denied a similar stay request on claims of racial bias. The appeals court did not consider the merits of the claim, but rejected it on procedural grounds.

Ruiz’s attorneys previously argued unsuccessfully that an expert witness for the prosecution falsely testified at the 2008 trial about Ruiz being an ongoing threat. His attorneys alleged prosecutors knew about the false testimony but remained silent about it. In his ruling, Godbey said the expert’s testimony “was quite possibly harmless” and even if it had been corrected, it would not have changed the jury’s decision to sentence Ruiz to death.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday unanimously declined to commute Ruiz’s death sentence to a lesser penalty.

Ruiz was one of five Texas death row inmates who sued to stop the state’s prison system from using what they allege are expired and unsafe execution drugs. Despite a civil court judge in Austin preliminarily agreeing with the claims, the state’s top two courts allowed one of the inmates who had been part of the litigation to be executed on Jan. 10.

Prison officials deny the lawsuit’s claims and say the state’s supply of execution drugs is safe.

At his trial, Ruiz testified he was afraid for his life when he fired in self-defense on Nix after the officer allegedly threatened to kill him. He also said he believed police fired their weapons first.

“I didn’t try to kill the officer. I just tried to stop him,” Ruiz testified.

Ruiz also said he fled from police that day because he had illegal drugs in his car and had taken drugs.

Gabriel Luchiano, who knew Nix when he worked as a security guard, said the officer always responded quickly when people needed help at the convenience store in northwest Dallas where Luchiano worked.

He was a “guardian angel,” said Luchiano. “It’s still painful no matter what. Nothing is going to close it.”

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