[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 8



TEXAS----execution

Houston man executed for '92 carjacking


Convicted killer Willie Shannon was executed tonight for the
carjack-slaying of a man who was on vacation with his family in Houston
more than 14 years ago.

Shannon spoke directly to the widow, 2 children and brother of his victim
and acknowledged that he "took a father."

"It wasn't my fault. It was an accident," he said of the shooting of
Benjamin Garza.

Shannon, 33, was smiling and humming as witnesses entered the death
chamber. He told the Garza family that his smile was "not from happiness.
If my life could bring your father back, then let it be. Don't take my
smile for disrespect."

Shannon said he was going to heaven. He said if he saw his victim, he
would ask Garza for forgiveness.

"I'll say when I see him, 'I'm sorry.'"

He urged the relatives of his victim to "go home, have fun, smile. I'm
happy. Why should I lie now. I have no anger. I have no fear."

10 minutes later at 6:24 p.m, he was pronounced dead.

Shannon has said that his gun went off as the 2 men struggled in a parking
lot when the Lubbock man refused to surrender his station wagon.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon turned down a request from
Shannon's lawyers to stay the execution.

Garza, 38, was trying to catch a catnap in a parking lot while his wife
and three kids were shopping nearby for some shoes when Shannon jumped
inside, pulled his gun and demanded the family's 15-year-old Ford wagon.

"He punched me inside the car," Shannon said, describing from death row
the July 19, 1992, confrontation. "He snapped. He said: 'You young punk!'
I thought this was no ordinary Joe."

Garza wasn't.

What Shannon, then 19, didn't know was that Garza had been in the federal
Witness Protection Program for a decade and had been living under a new
identity after testifying at drug trials in the Rio Grande Valley.

"As a federal protected witness, he's thinking his time has caught up with
him," Shannon said. "So he sees somebody with a gun. 'Oh, my God, they've
finally caught me.' And he's fighting for his life. He thought I was there
to kill him.

"I was just unlucky. And he was unlucky, too."

Shannon fired 3 shots, one of them striking Garza in the head. He kicked
his victim out of the station wagon and to the parking lot pavement, then
sped away, driving over Garza's hand as he fled.

"To me, it's like it happened yesterday," Garza's widow, Soila, told the
Houston Chronicle. "I held him in my arms until he took his last breath."

Shannon wrecked the car hours later in Chambers County, about 50 miles
east of Houston. And when a sheriff's deputy approached Shannon to ask him
about the accident, he ran off into some nearby woods. He was arrested
about 5 hours after the shooting at a truck stop in Beaumont, 30 miles to
the east, when a security guard spotted a man with a pistol in his pants
looking for rides and notified police. Shannon tried to run away again,
but was captured after a brief chase.

Garza had driven with his family from Lubbock for a vacation to the
Astroworld amusement park and the Houston Zoo.

"I needed a ride," Shannon said. "I thought I would doing something smart.
I chose a raggedy car, where somebody wouldn't fight me."

"I'm not saying I'm innocent. I wish it didn't happen. But it did. And
there's nothing I can do about that."

Vic Wisner, the Harris County district attorney who prosecuted Shannon,
said the 10th-grade dropout who had a juvenile record and had served a
year in jail for assault was looking for a getaway vehicle after raping a
maid at a hotel. Shannon was never charged with that attack, a crime he
denied.

Wisner also disputed Shannon's contention that Garza's killing was
unintentional.

"There's nothing that even indicated an accident," Wisner said. "He was
just waiting outside in the car. He was with his family. Shannon shot him
and literally kicked him out of the car."

Shannon becomes the 24th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
Texas and the 379th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on
December 7, 1982. He becomes the 140th condemned inmate to be put to death
since Rick Perry became governor in 2001.

1 more execution is scheduled for this year in Texas. If Charles Nealy is
put to death next week, Texas will wind up the year with 25 executions, up
three from last year but about average for the past decade. A record 40
Texas prisoners were executed in 2000.

At least 5 inmates already have execution dates in January.

Shannon becomes the 51st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
the USA and the 1055th overall since the nation resumed executions on
January 17, 1977.

(sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)