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Murderer becomes 22nd person executed in US this year
WASHINGTON, Dec 12, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A Texas man who killed a prison
officer was executed late Wednesday, bringing to 22 the number of people put
to death in the US this year.
Travis Runnels, 46, was pronounced dead at 7:26 pm (0126 GMT), the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice said, after a lethal injection at Huntsville
prison north of Houston.
Runnels made no final statement, the department said.
Just minutes earlier, the US Supreme Court had rejected a stay of
execution request.
Runnels had received a 70-year jail sentence in 1997 for armed robbery.
In 2003, he slashed the throat of a prison supervisor, Stanley Wiley. Two
years later he pleaded guilty to the killing and was sentenced to death.
His lawyers later sought to have the penalty reversed. They said
mitigating factors about his childhood were not introduced in the trial, and
that an expert witness, A.P. Merillat, gave false testimony.
The lawyers accused Merillat of falsely telling a jury that if Runnels
were given a life sentence instead of the death penalty, he would be free to
roam through the prison and pose a danger to others.
Since 2010, the death sentences in two capital cases that also made use of
Merillat’s testimony have been reversed.
“Mr Runnels was sentenced to death based on the false ‘expert’ testimony,”
one of his lawyers said in their petition to the Supreme Court.
But Texas authorities argued that the jury would have sentenced Runnels to
death without Merillat’s testimony, because of his alleged record of violent
attacks inside the prison.
“The evidence of Runnels’ future dangerousness was overwhelming,” Texas
lawyers told the country’s highest court, which rejected Runnels’ stay of
execution request.
Executions have dropped in the United States as opposition to the death
penalty has increased and due to legal questions over the methods of
execution. In 2016, the most recent low, 20 people were put to death,
compared to 86 in 1999.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 1022 hrs