Post by sclcookie on May 31, 2006 2:24:43 GMT -5
Ertman, Peña murderer set to die on July 11----Appeals court had granted, then reversed, a stay for teens' killer
A man whose execution for the murders of 2 teenage girls was blocked recently has been rescheduled for the death chamber on July 11.
State District Judge Jan Krocker set the new execution date for Derrick Sean O'Brien, 1 of 6 gang members convicted in the 1993 slayings of Waltrip High School sophomores Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña.
O'Brien, 31, originally was set to die on May 16, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay of execution.
The appeals court reversed course the next day, voting 5-4 to lift the stay and dismiss O'Brien's claim that Texas' lethal-injection procedure would violate his Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
O'Brien would be the 1st of Ertman's and Peña's killers to die. 4 others also were condemned, but 2 later saw their sentences commuted to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of those who were juveniles when they committed murder.
Another gang member, who was 14 at the time of the attack, received a 40-year sentence.
Ertman, 14, and Peña, 16, were walking home through a wooded area in northwest Houston on the night of June 24, 1993, when they were gang-raped and tortured, then strangled and stomped.
Their bodies were found 4 days later.
(source: Houston Chronicle)
A man whose execution for the murders of 2 teenage girls was blocked recently has been rescheduled for the death chamber on July 11.
State District Judge Jan Krocker set the new execution date for Derrick Sean O'Brien, 1 of 6 gang members convicted in the 1993 slayings of Waltrip High School sophomores Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña.
O'Brien, 31, originally was set to die on May 16, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay of execution.
The appeals court reversed course the next day, voting 5-4 to lift the stay and dismiss O'Brien's claim that Texas' lethal-injection procedure would violate his Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
O'Brien would be the 1st of Ertman's and Peña's killers to die. 4 others also were condemned, but 2 later saw their sentences commuted to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of those who were juveniles when they committed murder.
Another gang member, who was 14 at the time of the attack, received a 40-year sentence.
Ertman, 14, and Peña, 16, were walking home through a wooded area in northwest Houston on the night of June 24, 1993, when they were gang-raped and tortured, then strangled and stomped.
Their bodies were found 4 days later.
(source: Houston Chronicle)