Texas executes convicted killer
A man convicted of robbing and then fatally shooting a man has been executed by lethal injection, marking the 19th execution so far this year in Texas, America’s top capital punishment state.
Justin Fuller had acknowledged being present when 21-year-old Donald Whittington III was abducted and robbed in 1997, but maintained he did not kill the victim or show the body to friends.
In a brief statement before his death in Livingston yesterday, Fuller thanked his family and friends for their support.
“Let everyone know that you must stay strong for each other,” he said. “Take care of yourselves.” He told the warden standing next to him: “That’s it.”
As the lethal drugs began to take effect, he looked at his parents watching through a window a few feet away and said: ”I love you.”
The parents and a sister of his victim watched through an adjacent window, but he did not acknowledge them. Eight minutes later, at 6.18pm (18 minutes past midnight Irish time), he was pronounced dead.
“It was too easy. Compared to what my son went through, it was really too easy,” said Donald Whittington Jr., whose son was murdered. “He showed no remorse in court, and he showed no remorse being injected.
“People say it’s inhumane, but I wish they’d go through what we went through, what we’re still going through, to see what inhumane really is. What they did to my son was inhumane. He didn’t get no ton of chances to appeal it or get out of it.”
Prosecutors say that Fuller was part of a group that forced Whittington to make an ATM withdrawal and then took him to a lake where he was shot three times with a .22-calibre pistol.
“I was just being a follower,” Fuller said last week from outside death row at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Polunsky Unit. “I was young, 18 years old. I feel like I just got caught up in a bad situation.”
The 19th execution this year equals the total executions in the state for all of 2005. Another condemned inmate is set to die next week, and at least seven others are on the execution calendar the rest of the year.
Even if all are put to death, the total would fall well short of the record 40 Texas executions in 2000.
The US Supreme Court rejected Fuller’s appeals hours before the execution. Fuller’s lawyers contended his trial attorneys were ineffective and failed to tell him about a proposed plea bargain that would have spared him from a death sentence.
