Capital Punishment Texas

An inmate who killed a man and cut off his finger during a 1995 robbery was executed by injection in a Huntsville, Texas, prison. Robert Atworth, 31, was the 34th person put to death this year in Texas, which leads the nation in capital punishment. Atworth, in a final statement while strapped to a gurney in the state death chamber, told his family he loved them and accepted responsibility for his crime. "Send me home," he said.

The apostolic nuncio to the United States has urged the governors of Ohio and Texas to grant clemency to two men sentenced to death. On behalf of Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo wrote letters to Ohio Gov. Bob Taft and Texas Gov. George W. Bush, both Republicans, on Oct. 27 requesting clemency for Kenny Richey in Ohio and David Hicks in Texas. An execution date has not been set for Richey, who was sentenced in 1987 after a murder conviction.

A man who killed a deputy sheriff intervening in a family dispute in 1987 was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday in a prison in Huntsville, Texas. Alvin Crane, 41, was the 26th person put to death in Texas this year and the 190th since the state resumed capital punishment after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a national ban in 1976. Both figures lead the nation. Crane was executed for killing Ochiltree County Deputy Sheriff Melvin Drum on March 28, 1987, with a shotgun.

A man who killed a teller during a 1980 bank holdup became the third person put to death in Texas in the last seven days when he was executed by lethal injection Tuesday. Kenneth Dunn, 39, was pronounced dead six minutes after he was injected with a fatal mix of chemicals at a state prison here. Texas leads the nation in executions. Dunn was the 19th inmate executed in Texas this year and the 183rd since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.

A former auto mechanic who killed a woman during a 1975 burglary was executed in Huntsville, Texas, becoming the first Canadian to be put to death in the U.S. since 1952. Joseph Stanley Faulder, 61, didn't deny killing 75-year-old Inez Phillips. His attorneys argued his conviction was tainted because he wasn't told after his arrest that under international law he could seek legal help from Canadian authorities. The Canadian government supported his appeals.

Smirking and cursing his victim's family as he was led away, white supremacist John William King went to death row Thursday for chaining a black man to a pickup truck and dragging him to pieces. Eleven white jurors and their elected black foreman took less than three hours to sentence King to death by injection rather than life in prison, taking about the same amount of time they needed to convict him Tuesday of murdering James Byrd Jr.

Gov. George W. Bush on Friday spared the life of a death row inmate who once claimed to have killed 600 people, commuting Henry Lee Lucas' sentence to life in prison after doubts about his guilt in the so-called "orange socks" slaying were raised. Bush issued the reprieve on the recommendation of the state parole board, the first time the Republican governor has commuted a death sentence since he took office more than three years ago. Lucas, 62, was scheduled to die Tuesday by injection.

A three-time convicted burglar was executed by injection for gunning down a sheriff's deputy. Johnny Pyles had said he shot deputy Ray Edward Kovar in self-defense. Pyles, 40, was on parole following a second prison term for burglary and was casing a closed grocery store in the early morning hours of June 20, 1982, when Kovar confronted him. Pyles, armed with a pistol stolen earlier in the evening, said he was surprised by the deputy and began shooting.

As prosecutors worked Wednesday to build a death penalty case against three white men charged with dragging a black man to pieces behind a truck, President Clinton said the people of Jasper must "demonstrate that an act of evil like this is not what this country is all about." Dist. Atty. Guy James Gray said prosecutors are considering whether the evidence is strong enough to add a second felony charge, such as kidnapping, which would make the killing a capital punishment case.

Shortly before she was executed by lethal injection, Karla Faye Tucker told state officials that inmates should have to earn their keep in prison so they could become better, more responsible people. Tucker, in a three-page handwritten letter to state Prison Board Chairman Allan Polunsky, said the current system, in which prisoners get everything on a "silver platter," encourages indolence, the Houston Chronicle reported.