April 20
TEXAS----execution
Texas inmate who acknowledged murder executed
Douglas Roberts was convicted of a San Antonio murder.
A convicted murderer who said he first tried cocaine at age 10 was
executed Wednesday evening for abducting and fatally stabbing a San
Antonio man whose car he stole 9 years ago while he was high.
Douglas Roberts, 42, was upbeat and animated in the seconds before the
lethal drugs were administered.
"I've been hanging around this popsicle stand way too long," he said when
asked if he had a final statement. "I want to tell you all.
"When I die, bury me deep, lay two speakers at my feet, put some
headphones on my head and rock 'n' roll me when I'm dead."
"I'll see you in heaven some day," he added.
Roberts, 42, was smiling and mouthing "I love you all" to friends watching
through a window nearby when the drugs began to take effect. He gasped and
sputtered. He was pronounced dead 8 minutes later, at 6:21 p.m.
He was the 5th Texas prisoner put to death this year.
Roberts' appeals were rejected earlier this month by the U.S. Supreme
Court, and he asked his lawyers not to file last-minute actions to keep
him alive.
"Why go through the trouble for nothing?" he told The Associated Press
last week. "The appeals have run their course through the system."
He insisted he had no desire to die but saw his execution as a way to end
the loneliness and isolation of death row, which he described as "23 hours
a day in a cement box."
"So if you've got to spend the rest of your life like this, and if you're
like me and know the Lord, then today's a good day to go," he said.
Roberts was convicted of killing Jerry Velez, 40, who was abducted in San
Antonio in the early morning of May 18, 1996.
Roberts, who worked as a machinist and lived in the Austin suburb of Round
Rock, had just robbed a San Antonio convenience store and stole a
customer's car at knifepoint. Lost in an unfamiliar place and "stoned out
of my mind," Roberts said he spotted Velez walking to a row of cars parked
outside an apartment complex.
"I'm thinking: This guy is going to take me out of the city," said
Roberts, who was armed with a Bowie knife. "So I kidnapped him and his
vehicle."
The pair drove to a dirt road in a remote area of Kendall County, about 30
miles northwest of San Antonio, where Roberts said he and Velez scuffled.
"I guess he decided at the last minute he didn't want to be stranded or
thought he could overpower me," Roberts said.
An autopsy later showed Velez was stabbed 5 times, had ribs broken, a lung
punctured and head injuries. Evidence at Roberts' trial showed the victim
had been run over with a car as many as 3 times.
Roberts drove back toward Austin where he called police from a pay phone
and told a dispatcher about the slaying, then waited for authorities to
pick him up.
"I knew drugs got to the point where they were controlling you and you
were not controlling them," he said. "This was someone I'd gotten off the
street. Who was it going to be the next time? A little woman? A little
kid?
"I killed the guy that they said I killed," Roberts said. "There's no
question about that."
Instead of the manslaughter or reduced murder charge he expected, he was
indicted for capital murder. At his trial, he told his attorney to call no
defense witnesses and pick a jury that favored the death penalty. His jury
deliberated 2 hours before convicting him and the following day decided he
should be put to death.
In appeals that were rejected earlier by the courts, lawyers said Roberts
had a difficult childhood and suffered from depression and possible brain
damage. Roberts said his father was an alcoholic.
Roberts was to have shared the death chamber Wednesday with another
condemned prisoner, Milton Mathis, for a rare back-to-back execution.
Mathis, however, won a reprieve Tuesday from the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals.
At least 4 Texas inmates have execution dates in May, beginning with
Lonnie Pursley, set to die May 3 for the 1997 robbery and beating death of
a man in Polk County in East Texas.
Roberts becomes the 5th condemened inmate to be put to death this year in
Texas and the 341st overall since the state resumed capital punishment on
Dec. 7, 1982.
Roberts becomes the 15th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
the USA and the 959th overall since America resumed executions on January
17, 1977.
(sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)
