On
this date, December 11, 2019, Travis Runnels was executed by lethal injection
in Texas. He was convicted of the murder of Supervisor Stanley Wiley on January
29, 2003. It was good that he is now exterminated from the face of the earth,
he will never murder another inmate or a prison guard again.
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Travis
Runnels, 46, pleaded guilty in 2005 to the murder of prison supervisor, Stanley
Wiley in 2003 and received the death sentence. He shouted 'woof, woof',
took four short breaths and snored before he died by lethal injection Wednesday
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Runnels’ record is gruesome.He was a janitor at the prison boot factory in Amarillo, serving a long sentence for an aggravated robbery in Dallas. During a shift in January 2003, Runnels was angry about not being transferred to the barber shop for work, according to court records. He approached Wiley with a knife and slit his throat, killing him.Runnels had previously hit a guard in the jaw. And after Wiley’s death, when Runnels was kept in high-security custody while awaiting trial, he threw urine, feces and a light bulb at guards on separate occasions, according to court records.INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.texastribune.org/2019/12/11/texas-death-row-travis-runnels-execution-false-testimony/
Texas death row inmate who murdered prison shoe factory
supervisor blows kisses at female witnesses and shouts 'woof woof' before he is
put to death by lethal injection
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Travis Runnels, 46, was pronounced dead at
7.26pm after a lethal injection at Huntsville prison north of Houston
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He shouted 'woof, woof', took four short breaths and snored
before he died
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He never looked at the sister and brother-in-law of his
victim, who watched through a window in an adjacent witness room
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It took 22 minutes for him to die after the dose of
sedative pentobarbital
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Outside the Huntsville Unit prison, several hundred
corrections officers stood in formation, and victim Stanley Wiley's sister
shook hands or hugged them
By
Afp
and Associated
Press
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Stanley A. Wiley
(March 9, 1964 to January
29, 2003)
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A Texas man on death row because he killed a prison
officer, blew kisses and yelled 'woof woof' to three female friends and two of
his attorneys Wednesday before he was executed by lethal injection.
Travis Runnels, 46, was pronounced dead at 7.26pm
at Huntsville prison north of Houston and became the 22nd person put to
death in the US this year, minutes after a clemency appeal was rejected.
He never looked at the sister and brother-in-law of
his victim, Stanley Wiley, as they watched through a window in an adjacent
witness room.
Runnels responded 'No' when the warden asked if he
had a final statement.
He mouthed words to the people watching through a
window as he was belted to the death chamber gurney.
Runnels then took four short breaths and snored four
times before he became lifeless.
It took 22 minutes for him to die after the dose of
sedative pentobarbital.
Outside the Huntsville Unit prison, several hundred
Texas corrections officers stood in formation, and Wiley´s sister, Margaret
Robertson, hugged or shook the hands of many of them as she and her husband
left the prison.
The execution was delayed about an hour until the
U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal by Runnels' attorneys, who said a
prosecution witness at his 2005 trial provided false testimony and that no
defense was presented because his lawyers advised him to plead guilty and
called no witnesses.
Janet Gilger-VanderZanden, one of his more recent
attorneys, said Runnels changed during his 14 years on death row.
'There is true and authentic remorse for the death
of Mr. Wiley. There are no excuses, rather there is a commitment to finding
some kind of light in what was once a world of only darkness,'
Gilger-VanderZanden said.
Lower courts and the Texas Board of Pardons and
Paroles had also turned down Runnels' attorneys' requests to stop his
execution.
In his clemency petition to the Texas Board of
Pardons and Paroles, Runnels included letters from more than 25 individuals
from around the world who said Runnels had worked to make amends for what he
did.
'He has become a light that shines bright even in
the darkest of spaces. The tragedy that he is responsible for will only be
compounded if his valuable light were to be extinguished,' Kristin Procanick,
from Syracuse, New York, wrote in one of the letters.
Runnels had received a 70-year jail sentence in
1997 for armed robbery.
In 2003, he slashed the throat of a prison
supervisor, Stanley Wiley. Two years later he pleaded guilty to the
killing and was sentenced to death.
At the prison shoe factory, Runnels approached
Wiley from behind, pulled his head back and used enough force for the knife to
go through his trachea and cut Wiley´s spinal cord.
'It was cowardly,' prosecutor Randall Sims told
jurors at Runnels' trial.
Wiley, who grew up in the Texas Panhandle city of
Amarillo, began working as a state corrections officer in 1994. He was later
promoted to a supervisory position.
Inmate Bud Williams Jr., who also worked at the
shoe factory, testified that Wiley 'was a good guy'.
At his trial, Runnels´ lawyers didn't present any
witnesses or evidence, including information about Runnels' troubled childhood
and family history of drug and alcohol abuse, Gilger-VanderZanden said.
His lawyers later sought to have the penalty
reversed. They said mitigating factors about his childhood were not introduced
in the trial, and that an expert witness, A.P. Merillat, gave false testimony.
The lawyers accused Merillat of falsely telling a
jury that if Runnels were given a life sentence instead of the death penalty,
he would be free to roam through the prison and pose a danger to others.
Since 2010, the death sentences in two capital
cases that also made use of Merillat's testimony have been reversed.
'Mr Runnels was sentenced to death based on the
false "expert" testimony,' one of his lawyers said in their petition
to the Supreme Court.
But Texas authorities argued that the jury would
have sentenced Runnels to death without Merillat's testimony, because of his
alleged record of violent attacks inside the prison.
The Texas Attorney General's Office pointed to
assaults by Runnels on other guards after Wiley's death, including throwing
feces and a light bulb at them, as evidence that he was a future danger and
merited a death sentence.
'The evidence of Runnels' future
dangerousness was overwhelming,' Texas lawyers told the country's highest court,
which rejected Runnels' stay of execution request.
Executions have dropped in the United States as
opposition to the death penalty has increased and due to legal questions over
the methods of execution.
In 2016, the most recent low, 20 people were put to
death, compared to 86 in 1999.
Four inmates who were convicted in the deaths of
state correctional officers or other prison employees have been put to death
since 1974, while three others remain on death row, according to Texas
Department of Criminal Justice.
INTERNET
SOURCE: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7783205/Murderer-22nd-person-executed-US-year.html
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Stanley A. Wiley
(March 9, 1964 to January
29, 2003)
[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/111530383/stanley-a_-wiley]
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