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| Jose Villegas |
Texas executed a man by lethal injection on Wednesday who was convicted of stabbing his girlfriend, her child and her mother to death after a cocaine binge in 2001.
Villegas, a former cook, dishwasher and laborer, was free on bond for a
sexual assault charge and was supposed to go on trial the day of the
killings for an incident in which a woman said he punched her in the
face.
Jose Luis Villegas Jr., 39, was put to death with a lethal dose of drugs at 7:04 p.m. CDT at the Texas death chamber in Huntsville, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.
Just as the pentobarbital began taking effect, he said, "It does kind of
burn. Goodbye." He gasped several times, then started to breathe
quietly. Within less than a minute, all movement had stopped.
"I would like to remind my children once again I love them," Villegas
said when asked if he had a statement before being put to death.
"Everything is OK. I love you all, and I love my children. I am at
peace."
Six relatives of his victims witnessed the execution but declined to comment afterward.
"I was struck by the calm and peacefulness inside that room as
opposed to the utter terror the victims must have been in as Jose Luis
Villegas stabbed them," Mark Skurka, the Nueces County district attorney
who prosecuted Villegas, said after watching the execution.
"He made no attempt to make peace with the family, apologize to the
family or show any remorse for taking the lives of three people," Skurka
said.
Villegas is the seventh person executed in Texas this year and the 17th in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, an organization that tracks executions.
The
U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt Villegas' scheduled execution. The high court, on a 5-4 vote, rejected arguments from attorneys for Jose Villegas who said the 39-year-old was mentally impaired and ineligible for the death penalty.
The ruling came about 30 minutes after a six-hour window opened for Villegas' lethal injection.
Villegas' lawyers contended testing in February showed he had an IQ of
59, below the IQ of 70 that courts have embraced as a threshold for
mental impairment. State attorneys disputed the test result and called
it a late attempt to delay the punishment.
Villegas confessed that the day of the killings he had consumed about $200 of cocaine with his 24-year-old girlfriend, Erida Perez Salazar, at the home she shared with her parents, according to court documents.
After her mother, Alma Perez, 51, ordered Villegas to leave the house, he stabbed her dozens of times with a kitchen knife and then proceeded to a bedroom where he stabbed his girlfriend and her son Jacob, 3, numerous times each, according to court records.
Villegas then left the house and drove off in Salazar's vehicle and sold a television he stole from the home to buy more cocaine, according to court documents.
He had planned to return to the house to kill himself with an overdose of cocaine, but tried to flee when he saw police were already there, according to court documents. He was caught by police after a high-speed chase and foot pursuit.
Texas has executed 514 people, more than a third of all executions in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Source: Agencies, April 16, 2014
