Stuart Alexander

TEXAS EXECUTION TODAY – Daniel Lee Lopez at 6 p.m EXECUTED 6:31 PM

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Texas inmate Daniel Lee Lopez got his wish Wednesday when he was executed for striking and killing a police lieutenant with an SUV during a chase more than six years ago.

The lethal injection was carried out after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals from his attorneys who disregarded both his desire to die and lower court rulings that Lopez was competent to make that decision.

“I hope this execution helps my family and also the victim’s family,” said Lopez, who spoke quietly and quickly. “This was never meant to be, sure beyond my power. I can only walk the path before me and make the best of it. I’m sorry for putting you all through this. I am sorry. I love you. I am ready. May we all go to heaven.”

As the drugs took effect, he took two deep breaths, then two shallower breaths. Then all movement stopped.

He was pronounced dead at 6:31 p.m. CDT — 15 minutes after the lethal dose began.

Lopez, 27, became the 10th inmate put to death this year in Texas, which carries out capital punishment more than any other state. Nationally, he was the 19th prisoner to be executed.

Lopez’s “obvious and severe mental illness” was responsible for him wanting to use the legal system for suicide, illustrating his “well-documented history of irrational behavior and suicidal tendencies,” attorney David Dow, who represented Lopez, had told the high court. Dow also argued the March 2009 crime was not a capital murder because Lopez didn’t intend to kill Corpus Christi Lt. Stuart Alexander.

The officer’s widow, Vicky Alexander, and three friends who were witnesses with her prayed in the chamber before Lopez was pronounced dead by a doctor. Some people selected by Lopez as witnesses sang “Amazing Grace” from an adjacent witness area.

Alexander, 47, was standing in a grassy area on the side of a highway where he had put spike strips when he was struck by the sport utility vehicle Lopez was fleeing in.

Lopez, who also wrote letters to a federal judge and pleaded for his execution to move forward, said last week from death row that a Supreme Court reprieve would be “disappointing.”

“I’ve accepted my fate,” he said. “I’m just ready to move on.”

Nueces County District Attorney Mark Skurka said Lopez showed “no regard for human life” when he fought with an officer during a traffic stop, then sped away, evading pursuing officers and striking Alexander, who had been on the police force for 20 years. Even when he finally was cornered by police cars, Lopez tried ramming his SUV to escape and didn’t stop until he was shot.

“He had no moral scruples, no nothing. It was always about Daniel Lopez, and it’s still about Daniel Lopez,” Skurka said Tuesday. “He’s a bad, bad guy.”

Lopez was properly examined by a psychologist, testified at a federal court hearing about his desire to drop appeals and was found to have no mental defects, state attorneys said in opposing delays to the punishment.

Deputies found a dozen packets of cocaine and a small scale in a false compartment in the console of the SUV.

Records showed Lopez was on probation at the time after pleading guilty to indecency with a child in Galveston County and was a registered sex offender. He had other arrests for assault.

Testimony at his trial showed he had at least five children by three women, and a sixth was born while he was jailed for Alexander’s death. Court records show Lopez had sex with girls as young as 14 and had a history of assaults and other trouble while in school, where he was a 10th-grade dropout.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.

 

 

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Texas inmate Daniel Lee Lopez has been trying to speed up his execution since being sent to death row five years ago for striking and killing a police lieutenant with an SUV during a chase.

On Wednesday, he’s hoping to get his wish.

The 27-year-old prisoner is set to die in Huntsville after getting court approval to drop his appeals. A second inmate scheduled to be executed this week in Texas, the nation’s most active death penalty state, won a court reprieve Tuesday.

Lopez is facing lethal injection for the 2009 death of Corpus Christi Lt. Stuart Alexander. The 47-year-old officer was standing in a grassy area on the side of a highway where he had put spike strips when he was struck by the sport utility vehicle Lopez was fleeing in.

Last week from death row Lopez said: “It’s a waste of time just sitting here. I just feel I need to get over with it.”

Attorneys representing Lopez refused to accept his intentions, questioning federal court findings that Lopez was mentally competent to volunteer for execution. They appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the punishment, arguing his crime was not a capital murder because he didn’t intend to kill the officer, and that Lopez had mental disabilities and was using the state to carry out long-standing desires to commit suicide.

“It is clear Lopez has been allowed to use the legal system in another attempt to take his own life,” attorney David Dow told the high court.

Lopez, who also wrote letters to a federal judge and pleaded for his execution to move forward, said a Supreme Court reprieve would be “disappointing.”

“It’s crazy they keep appealing, appealing,” he said last week of his lawyers’ efforts. “I’ve explained it to them many times. I guess they want to get paid for appealing.”

Lopez was properly examined by a psychologist, testified at a federal court hearing about his desire to drop appeals and was found to have no mental defects, state attorneys said in opposing delays in the punishment.

Alexander had been a police officer for 20 years. His death came during a chase that began just past midnight on March 11, 2009, after Lopez was pulled over by another officer for running a stop sign in a Corpus Christi neighborhood. Authorities say Lopez was driving around 60 mph.

Lopez struggled with the officer who made the stop and then fled. He rammed several patrol cars, drove at a high speed with his lights off and hit Alexander like “a bullet and a target,” said an officer who testified at Lopez’s 2010 trial.

When finally cornered by patrol cars, Lopez used his SUV as a battering ram trying to escape and wasn’t brought under control until he was shot, officers testified.

“It’s a horrible dream,” Lopez said from death row. “I’ve replayed it in my mind many times.”

Deputies found a dozen packets of cocaine and a small scale in a false compartment in the console of the SUV.

Records show Lopez was on probation at the time after pleading guilty to indecency with a child in Galveston County and was a registered sex offender. He had other arrests for assault.

Lopez would be the 10th inmate executed this year in Texas. Nationally, 18 prisoners have been put to death this year, with Texas accounting for 50 percent of them.

On Tuesday, another death row prisoner, Tracy Beatty, 54, received a reprieve from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. He had been scheduled for lethal injection Thursday. He’s on death row for the 2003 slaying of his 62-year-old mother, Carolyn Click, near Tyler in East Texas.

At least seven other Texas inmates have execution dates in the coming months.

UPCOMING EXECUTIONS Texas: Daniel Lee Lopez, Tracy Beatty set to die this week

Both death row inmates claim murder was not intentional.
Although Clifton Williams narrowly avoided execution July 16, 2 Texans are scheduled for the gurney next week. Both inmates maintain that they didn’t mean for the individuals they killed to die, though their opinions about their pending fates differ.
Daniel Lee Lopez
Daniel Lee Lopez
Corpus Christi native Daniel Lee Lopez is scheduled to die first; he’s currently slated to be strapped in at 6pm on Wednesday, Aug. 12. Lopez was driving 60 miles an hour through a neighborhood in March 2009 trying to evade cops and avoid arrest for outstanding warrants when he hit and killed 20-year veteran police officer Stuart Alexander as he was laying Stop Sticks near the highway. Lopez was eventually apprehended after being shot in the arm, neck, and chest. Then 21, he was indicted for 10 offenses, including the capital murder of Alexander. He initially pleaded not guilty, but later changed his stance. He was assigned to a psychologist, who reported that Lopez held an “increasingly firm” opinion that he’d rather a death sentence than live the rest of his life in prison. The state offered life in prison in exchange for a guilty plea, but Lopez pleaded not guilty and went to trial.
Central to the case was debate on whether or not Lopez intentionally ran over Lt. Alexander. At times, he told attorneys that he didn’t mean to do it, that his sight was affected by shots of pepper spray deployed by other officers. Yet, just prior to closing arguments, attorneys informed the judge that Lopez insisted on testifying that he did in fact mean to swerve and hit Alexander. The court rejected Lopez’s request, but the jury still found him guilty on all counts, including capital murder. Lopez waived his right to a state petition for habeas corpus in April 2012 and filed his federal papers that May. The brief, largely blank application asserted 1 solitary ground for relief: that the death penalty in Texas violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. He underwent a series of competency exams and hearings in 2013, and soon after received his right to waive appeal from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
His attorneys – James Rytting, David Dow, and Jeffrey Newberry – maintain that he should never have been found guilty of capital murder, as his testimony concerning his actions continuously flipped from intentional to unintentional. They thus contest that the district court erred in accepting Lopez’s waiver, as Lopez does not understand that the conduct to which he admits – an unintentional murder – does not fall within the definition of capital murder. Lopez, however, remains convinced he’s made the right call. In April, he told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times that he accepts his punishment. “It wasn’t on purpose,” he said. “I killed a police officer because I tried escaping. And it was never intentional but I feel responsible.”
Tracy Beatty
Tracy Beatty
The 2nd individual, Tracy Beatty, goes to the gurney one day after Lopez. Beatty, 54, was arrested for the Nov. 25, 2003, murder of his mother, 62-year-old Carolyn Click. Beatty strangled, smothered, and/or suffocated Click during an argument at her home, and left her in the tub for 2 days before burying her in the ground beside her house and making off with her car and possessions. When questioned, he told authorities that a man named Junior Reynolds had actually killed his mother; that he then killed Reynolds and dumped him “in water” before returning to his mother’s house to ice her in the tub and eventually bury her by the house. But the investigation turned to Beatty. During his arrest, as he was being delivered from Henderson County to the Smith County Jail, he told authorities: “I really didn’t mean to kill her. I came in drunk. She started bitching at me, and I just started choking her. I didn’t even know she was dead until the next morning when I found her still laying on the living room floor.” He was indicted for capital murder the following May and found guilty on Aug. 9, 2004. Deemed a future threat because of 2 prior felony convictions – injury to a child in 1986 and a robbery in 1988 – he was sentenced to death on Aug. 10.
Attorney Jeff Haas argued in petitions for habeas corpus and appeals to the 5th Circuit that his client received ineffective assistance from counsel in two different forms: Trial counsel failed to discover and present mitigating evidence, and failed to properly present enough facts to prove Click’s “killing was a murder rather than capital murder.” Haas pointed to one instance in particular, unmentioned during trial, in which Click and an acquaintance had an argument that a witness indicated looked as though they would “rip each other’s heads off.” He attempted to use that testimony as evidence that Beatty had no intention to kill his mother when he showed up at her house; that a heated conversation escalated to that point. Efforts for relief, however, were denied, and in July 2014, the 5th Circuit denied his application for a certificate of appealability. The Supreme Court rejected his case in May.
Lopez is set to be the 10th Texan executed this year, with Beatty in line to be No. 11. Should both executions go through, the state will end the week having executed 529 people since reinstating the death penalty in 1976.
Source: Austin Chronicle, August 6, 2015