Thread: ‘Railroad Killer’ executed in Texas

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13579833/

‘Railroad Killer’ executed in Texas
Drifter dies by injection after U.S. Supreme Court rejects last-ditch appeal
The Associated Press


Updated: 9:42 p.m. PT June 27, 2006
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A train-hopping serial killer linked to at least 15 murders near railroad tracks around the country said “I deserve what I am getting” before he was executed Tuesday night.

Angel Maturino Resendiz mumbled a prayer, saying “Lord, forgive me. Lord, forgive me,” and acknowledged the presence of relatives watching through a nearby window.

“I want to ask if it is in your heart to forgive me,” he said as he looked toward the relatives of victims in another room. “You don’t have to. I know I allowed the devil to rule my life.”

“I thank God for having patience for me. I don’t deserve to cause you pain. You did not deserve this. I deserve what I am getting,” he said.

Resendiz, 46, was pronounced dead at 8:05 p.m. CDT.

The Mexican drifter known as the “Railroad Killer” was executed for the slaying of physician Claudia Benton 7½ years ago. She was killed during a deadly spree in 1998 and 1999 that earned Resendiz a spot on the FBI’s Most Wanted list as authorities searched for a murderer who slipped across the U.S. border and roamed the country by freight train.

Benton was stabbed with a kitchen knife, bludgeoned with a 2-foot bronze statue and raped in 1998 in her Houston home, just down the street from a railroad track.

Authorities realized they were pursuing a serial killer when DNA evidence tied Resendiz to Benton’s murder and the killings of a church pastor and his wife who were beaten with a sledgehammer as they slept in their house near tracks outside Houston.

A month later, the Mexican drifter walked across the international bridge at El Paso from Mexico and surrendered to police as part of a deal arranged by his sister.

Benton’s husband, George, witnessed Resendiz’s execution “to make the statement that people have to understand what evil really is.”

“What was executed today may have looked like a man, walked and talked like a man but what was contained inside that skin was not a human being,” he said. “This is not human behavior but something I can only say is evil contained in human form, a creature without a soul, no conscience, no sense of remorse, no regard for the sanctity of human life.”

The execution was the 13th of the year in the nation’s most active death penalty state.

The execution was delayed almost two hours before the U.S. Supreme Court rejected several last-day appeals. Resendiz’s lead appeals lawyer, Jack Zimmermann, had argued that his client, who described himself as half-man and half-angel, told psychiatrists he couldn’t be executed because he didn’t believe he could die.

The court also rejected an appeal by the Houston-based consul general of Mexico questioning the Mexican national’s competency and challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection process as cruel and unusual punishment. Capital punishment is not allowed in Mexico.

“We do look after the rights of Mexican nationals,” Consul General Carlos Gonzalez said. “We watch to make sure the law is applied fairly to a Mexican national.”

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department protested the execution.

“The execution was carried out despite the existence of medical evidence of severe mental problems that, in principle, should have excluded the application of this penalty,” according to a statement from the agency.

In an interview shortly after arriving on death row in 2000, Resendiz said he recalled the attacks as if were watching something through a tunnel. “Everything you see is in a distance,” he said. “Everything is slow and silent.”

Seven and a half years he was allowed to eat and drink and live. Fifteen hideous murders and rape he commited. If he understood and believed the things he said that is between him and God. It does not bring anyone back but it does recompence his dirty deeds and send the message to like-minded criminals.

The court also rejected an appeal by the Houston-based consul general of Mexico questioning the Mexican national’s competency and challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection process as cruel and unusual punishment. Capital punishment is not allowed in Mexico.

Nothing could be too cruel for this murderer! Mexico does not allow capital punishment - just decapitation! What jackasses they are!

But I thought all Mexicans are poor, hard working people just trying to feed themselves? Yeah, so the pro-ILLEGALS would like us to believe.

Capital punishment shouldn't be called punishment at all. It is healthy self-preservation of the corpus humanitas. We twist ourselves into pretzels to avoid inflicting "cruel and unusual" suffering on the condemned. Hacking someone to pieces or beating them to a death is cruel and unusual. But the liberals never remember that, because ghosts do not have civil rights. And ghosts aren't nearly as media-sexy as poor serial killers who just look sorrowful enough. The liberals prey on our weakness for judging people by their looks. It is the liberals who use racial profiling, faster than anyone else.

When a cancer is detected, while operable, we must kill it, before it kills us. People such as Resindez have posted gruesome advertisment: they don't belong, they don't want to belong, and they will kill until killed. It is unfortunate, but it is their choice.

PBS.ORG:

Be aware: the liberal press is continuing to advance its support for illegal immigration by telling stories of those who imperil themselves and others to work here. They sing like sirens, diverting your attention, trying to soften your focus. They continue to whisper that the illegal campesinos and braceros are dying in the desert. And it's all our fault.

Just watched a 30 minute film on "Frontline: Stories from a Small Planet." Claudine Lomanaco's piece told the story of Matias Juan Garcia Zavaleta, a seasonal illegal migrant, who died in the Arizona desert, in the arms of his brother. Based on his brother's description, Matias was in the throes of delirium, induced by a cause not mentioned. Though his brother was deported some days later, he immediately turned around and re-entered illegally. He hitched a ride to Fresno, where he continues to work on a farm. Anyone's untimely death is tragic and should be mourned. It was Mr Zavaleta's choice to take the risk. But, the implication is we are who should be ashamed. Not the smugglers, not Mexico, not the man himself. No, you and me.

Why is Ms Lomanaco declaring war on the poor, Black New Orlean's elderly citizen woman, struggling to stay alive? Or the poor white New Orlean's disabled Veteran? I could go on and on.

We must remain on our toes. Now is not the time to relax, their onslaught is increasing.

Buenas noches, Angel!

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MEXICO-US/EXECUTION
Mexico decries execution in Texas
Mexico City, Jun 28 (EFE).- Authorities here expressed regret Wednesday over the execution of Mexican citizen Angel Maturino Resendiz, the notorious "Railroad Killer," at a prison in Huntsville, Texas.

Resendiz, sentenced to death in 2000 for the rape-murder of a Houston doctor but also believed responsible in a dozen other slayings, was executed Tuesday night by lethal injection "despite medical evidence about the severe mental disturbances he suffered," the Mexican foreign ministry said in a communique.

A Texas court ruled last Wednesday that Resendiz, who asked for forgiveness before being executed and said he deserved his fate, was mentally competent for the application of capital punishment. Both his defense lawyers and Mexican diplomats filed multiple appeals challenging that ruling, but they were rejected.

The Mexican government, in commenting on the execution, noted its own "absolute opposition to the death penalty." Lawmakers here officially abolished capital punishment in June 2005, more than 40 years after the country's last execution. EFE gt/dr

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33801

DEATH PENALTY-U.S.:
Mexico Could Not Stop Execution of Serial Killer Immigrant
Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jun 28 (IPS) - The southern U.S. state of Texas executed a Mexican immigrant Tuesday night after rejecting expert medical opinions that the condemned man was mentally incompetent, and ignoring appeals from the Mexican government to spare the man's life.

"Any execution is a failure of justice, and so was this one. Everything possible was done to prevent it, but the efforts were in vain," Alfonso García, spokesman in Mexico for the human rights watchdog group Amnesty International, said in an interview with IPS.

Mexican immigrant Ángel Maturino died by lethal injection at a prison in Texas, where he had been held since 1999. He was condemned to death for the 1998 murder and rape of doctor Claudia Benton.

Maturino was also implicated in 14 more homicides committed in the 1990s in Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Illinois. All the victims were slain close to railways, earning him the nickname the "railroad killer."

The Mexican foreign ministry released a statement deploring the execution and stating that it "was carried out in spite of medical evidence that he suffered severe mental disturbance, which in principle should have rendered him ineligible for the death penalty."

Maturino's execution, originally set for May 10, was postponed so that psychiatric and psychological tests could be performed. He claimed to be "half angel and half man," and said he had been impelled to murder by an "evil force," and at the same time by "the will of God."

Last week judge William Harmon, of the 178th district criminal court in Houston, Texas, heard the medical evidence. Although four of the five experts were of the opinion that Maturino was insane, the judge ruled that he was "sufficiently competent" and would not be spared the death penalty.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that convicts who are "mentally incompetent" shall not be executed.

"Maturino's case was a very difficult one because he had committed so many brutal crimes, although we maintain the position that he was not mentally fit," said Amnesty International spokesman García.

The administration of Mexican President Vicente Fox lodged a series of appeals with the U.S. justice system attempting to prevent the execution, and even convinced the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in Costa Rica, to ask the United States to postpone the execution until all available legal means had been exhausted.

But neither these actions, nor a telephone call from Mexican Foreign Minister Ernesto Derbez to Texas Governor Rick Perry, pleading for clemency, had any effect.

The Mexican foreign ministry's communiqué said that it had "monitored the case promptly and continuously from the start, and had resorted to every possible domestic and international recourse to preserve Mr. Maturino's life, according to our country's staunch commitment to defend the human rights of its citizens abroad, and its absolute opposition to the death penalty."

Maturino was the sixth Mexican to be executed in the United States since it restored the death penalty in 1976, when the Supreme Court lifted the ban on capital punishment that the court itself had imposed four years earlier. The death penalty remains illegal in 12 of the 50 states in the U.S.

The last Mexican to be put to death by the U.S. legal system prior to Maturino was Javier Suárez, executed in Texas in August 2002. "The failure in the Maturino case will not end our efforts to stop the use of the death penalty in the United States and other countries," human rights activist García said.

Maturino, who before his arrest was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Top Ten Most Wanted List, asked for the death penalty during the trial, rather than a life sentence.

He was born in a small town in Puebla, a state near Mexico City, and grew up virtually as a street child. He was 14 when he first entered the United States as an undocumented immigrant.

He was arrested 16 times in the United States for minor robbery and other crimes, and deported eight times. However, he kept returning to the U.S.

Unlike the cases of other Mexican immigrants in which the failure of the authorities to notify the Mexican consulate of their arrest served a key role in the legal strategy of their defence attorneys, this requirement was duly fulfilled after Maturino was arrested.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled in late March 2004 that the United States had violated the rights of 51 Mexican nationals by sentencing them to death without having provided them with the opportunity for consular assistance at the time of their arrest and trial.

Thanks to this ruling, in 2004 the execution of Mexican immigrant Osvaldo Torres in Oklahoma was prevented, and his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

The other immigrants sentenced to death, and who did not have the benefit of consular assistance, are awaiting review of their cases.

Amnesty International maintains that "the death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment," and constitutes "a violation of the right to life."

"The death penalty is irrevocable and can be inflicted on the innocent. It has never been shown to deter crime more effectively than other punishments," the organisation states.

There were 2,148 known executions in 2005 -- 94 percent of them took place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States. In 2004, 7,395 people in 64 countries were sentenced to death, according to Amnesty International.

(END/2006)