Post by sclcookie on May 31, 2006 2:25:02 GMT -5
Execution silences Valley killer
Strapped to a gurney, Jesus Ledesma Aguilar maintained his innocence Wednesday, until a lethal injection cut off his final, taunting words.
"Are you all happy, you happy chief?" asked Aguilar, looking to where members of the murder victims' families watched behind a glass as he lay restrained by leather straps.
"I can't ask you to forgive me because I wasn't the one," he said, apparently directing his words to Leonardo Chavez Jr., who at 9 told police he saw Aguilar and his nephew Christopher Quiroz shoot his parents execution-style in a trailer home in 1995 near Harlingen.
Chavez Jr., now 20, didn't attend the execution, but family members of the slain couple - Annette, 31, and Leonardo, 33 - were outraged at the final words, which came in a mixture of Spanish and English.
Huntsville Unit Warden Charles O'Reilly silently requested the start of the lethal dosage, cutting off Aguilar's speech, which included praise to the Texas Syndicate prison gang he was a member of.
The victims' family later said they were angry because they didn't have the opportunity to verbally assail Aguilar, 42, for leaving two young boys without parents.
"When you committed this brutal crime you took away a loving mommy and a daddy from 2 precious children whose lives have been shattered forever," Annette's sister, Sulema Esparza Rivera, said in a statement.
"When he started to talk all that smack and denied everything, he showed his true colors," said Nicolas Chavez Jr., the victim's brother, describing Aguilar as the devil. "The only thing is, he didn't have any horns on his head."
Aguilar requested that a chaplain not attend, only a warden stood at the head of the gurney placed in the center of a small execution chamber bordered by lime green bars. Seven minutes after the lethal injection stopped Aguilar in a gargle of words, a physician shined a red light in his eyes, checked for a pulse and then pulled a white sheet over his head at 6:32 p.m.
He was the 10th person executed in Texas so far this year. 15 more are planned.
Cameron County prosecutors convinced a jury that Aguilar orchestrated the killing of the Chavez couple on June 10, 1995, while they were house-sitting for relatives on a drug run.
Police found 20 pounds of marijuana in the trailer after the killings.
Quiroz received a life sentence. Aguilar, who was previously convicted of shooting a peace officer near Lubbock, was accused of carrying out the killings because he was betrayed.
A former partner in crime, Rick Esparza, who lived at the trailer, had started running marijuana to Mississippi without him, according to testimony. Aguilar shot Annette Chavez, Esparza's sister, in the back of the neck. Quiroz shot her husband.
Court-appointed defense attorneys argued in various appeals that Aguilar was denied a fair sentence because the jury wasn't given the option to consider murder, which comes with a maximum life sentence. Appeals courts ruled otherwise.
On death row, Aguilar, formerly a bricklayer, lived in a 60-square foot cell and was denied radio privileges because of disciplinary reasons. Guards delivered three squares of prison food a day to his cell; he requested enchiladas for his last meal Wednesday.
His 2 youngest daughters, Jessica, 12, and Vanessa, 10, made the 400-mile trip from the Rio Grande Valley to Livingston several times to see him. Typically on visits, the girls and other family members would buy him Mountain Dew soda, Lays potato chips, and Snickers bars from vending machines.
Neither of the girls ever touched their father. They knew him by talking to him via a black telephone receiver, peering through a glass wall.
On the girls' last visit May 12, Aguilar showed them how to shoot a basketball, but without the ball. The girls recalled the visit last week while playing volleyball in the front yard of their grandmother's home in the tiny town of Primera.
At the home, the family has a picture that Aguilar drew of a cross with a rose on it. Written across the top is the phrase "May your day be blessed," and written on the back, "All we are is dust in the wind."
The 2 young daughters said they look forward to the possibility of having quinceañeras, 15th birthday parties traditionally celebrated by young Hispanic women, which their father spoke about on their last visit.
Jessica Aguilar said he told them he'd watch over them in spirit.
None of his family members, however, attended his execution. The family elected not to claim his body, and he will be buried in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison cemetery, a few blocks from where he was executed.
(source: San Antonio Express-News)
Strapped to a gurney, Jesus Ledesma Aguilar maintained his innocence Wednesday, until a lethal injection cut off his final, taunting words.
"Are you all happy, you happy chief?" asked Aguilar, looking to where members of the murder victims' families watched behind a glass as he lay restrained by leather straps.
"I can't ask you to forgive me because I wasn't the one," he said, apparently directing his words to Leonardo Chavez Jr., who at 9 told police he saw Aguilar and his nephew Christopher Quiroz shoot his parents execution-style in a trailer home in 1995 near Harlingen.
Chavez Jr., now 20, didn't attend the execution, but family members of the slain couple - Annette, 31, and Leonardo, 33 - were outraged at the final words, which came in a mixture of Spanish and English.
Huntsville Unit Warden Charles O'Reilly silently requested the start of the lethal dosage, cutting off Aguilar's speech, which included praise to the Texas Syndicate prison gang he was a member of.
The victims' family later said they were angry because they didn't have the opportunity to verbally assail Aguilar, 42, for leaving two young boys without parents.
"When you committed this brutal crime you took away a loving mommy and a daddy from 2 precious children whose lives have been shattered forever," Annette's sister, Sulema Esparza Rivera, said in a statement.
"When he started to talk all that smack and denied everything, he showed his true colors," said Nicolas Chavez Jr., the victim's brother, describing Aguilar as the devil. "The only thing is, he didn't have any horns on his head."
Aguilar requested that a chaplain not attend, only a warden stood at the head of the gurney placed in the center of a small execution chamber bordered by lime green bars. Seven minutes after the lethal injection stopped Aguilar in a gargle of words, a physician shined a red light in his eyes, checked for a pulse and then pulled a white sheet over his head at 6:32 p.m.
He was the 10th person executed in Texas so far this year. 15 more are planned.
Cameron County prosecutors convinced a jury that Aguilar orchestrated the killing of the Chavez couple on June 10, 1995, while they were house-sitting for relatives on a drug run.
Police found 20 pounds of marijuana in the trailer after the killings.
Quiroz received a life sentence. Aguilar, who was previously convicted of shooting a peace officer near Lubbock, was accused of carrying out the killings because he was betrayed.
A former partner in crime, Rick Esparza, who lived at the trailer, had started running marijuana to Mississippi without him, according to testimony. Aguilar shot Annette Chavez, Esparza's sister, in the back of the neck. Quiroz shot her husband.
Court-appointed defense attorneys argued in various appeals that Aguilar was denied a fair sentence because the jury wasn't given the option to consider murder, which comes with a maximum life sentence. Appeals courts ruled otherwise.
On death row, Aguilar, formerly a bricklayer, lived in a 60-square foot cell and was denied radio privileges because of disciplinary reasons. Guards delivered three squares of prison food a day to his cell; he requested enchiladas for his last meal Wednesday.
His 2 youngest daughters, Jessica, 12, and Vanessa, 10, made the 400-mile trip from the Rio Grande Valley to Livingston several times to see him. Typically on visits, the girls and other family members would buy him Mountain Dew soda, Lays potato chips, and Snickers bars from vending machines.
Neither of the girls ever touched their father. They knew him by talking to him via a black telephone receiver, peering through a glass wall.
On the girls' last visit May 12, Aguilar showed them how to shoot a basketball, but without the ball. The girls recalled the visit last week while playing volleyball in the front yard of their grandmother's home in the tiny town of Primera.
At the home, the family has a picture that Aguilar drew of a cross with a rose on it. Written across the top is the phrase "May your day be blessed," and written on the back, "All we are is dust in the wind."
The 2 young daughters said they look forward to the possibility of having quinceañeras, 15th birthday parties traditionally celebrated by young Hispanic women, which their father spoke about on their last visit.
Jessica Aguilar said he told them he'd watch over them in spirit.
None of his family members, however, attended his execution. The family elected not to claim his body, and he will be buried in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison cemetery, a few blocks from where he was executed.
(source: San Antonio Express-News)