Afrigather Wesley Ruiz, a 43-year-old Texas man who was sentenced to demise for the 2007 killing of a police officer, has been executed by deadly injection.
Ruiz was convicted in 2008 of murdering 33-year-old officer Mark Nix following a high-speed automotive chase the earlier yr. Over greater than 14 years of incarceration, he had filed quite a few failed appeals to his conviction and sentence.
He died on the state penitentiary in Huntsville at 6:41 p.m. native time on Wednesday, according to The Texas Tribune. The execution got here shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an unsigned order to disclaim a last-second enchantment.
“I wish to apologize to Mark and the Nix household,” Ruiz mentioned in his remaining assertion, according to the Tribune. “I hope this brings you closure. I wish to say to all my household and buddies all over the world thanks for supporting me. To my youngsters, stand tall and proceed to make me proud, don’t fret about me, I’ll be OK.”
Final week, a choose denied Ruiz’s declare that his constitutional rights had been violated as a consequence of alleged false testimony from a trial witness, according to The Dallas Morning Information. Ruiz, who was Hispanic, additionally reportedly claimed that some jury members had been racially biased towards him.
As well as, Ruiz was certainly one of three Texas demise row inmates who sued the state in early January over plans to hold out executions utilizing an allegedly expired and unsafe provide of pentobarbital.
CECILE CLOCHERET/AFP; Texas Division of Legal Justice/Getty Photographs / Texas Division of Legal Justice
On January 10, District Choose Catherine Mauzy dominated that the medicine had been doubtless expired and ordered a short lived injunction to halt the execution of Ruiz, in addition to fellow demise row inmates John Balentine and Robert Fratta, the latter of whom was scheduled to die later that day.
The Texas Courtroom of Legal Appeals and Texas Supreme Courtroom shortly overturned Mauzy’s ruling, though on the basis that the choose lacked standing slightly than claiming her evaluation was incorrect. Fratta’s execution was in the end carried out as scheduled on January 10.
Ruiz was the second individual to be put to demise in Texas in 2023 and the fourth within the U.S., according to the Related Press. The Lone Star State is about to execute seven further prisoners this yr.
Balentine had been scheduled to be the subsequent Texas demise row prisoner to be executed, earlier than a choice from a choose paused his February 8 execution date on Wednesday.
Ruiz admitted to taking pictures Nix however claimed that he did so in self-defense, sustaining that he wrongly believed the officer had fired at him after the chase ended and he was hiding in his automotive.
The high-speed chase started when the automotive that Ruiz was driving was erroneously recognized as being concerned in a latest murder that authorities later concluded he performed no half in, The Dallas Morning Information reported.
The pursuit ended when Ruiz misplaced management of his automobile and crashed close to a home. Nix was fatally shot as he was trying to bash in Ruiz’s automotive window with a baton. Different officers responded by taking pictures at Ruiz, who was hit 9 occasions.
The group Texas Coalition to Abolish the Loss of life Penalty (TCADP) lately urged the state to grant clemency to Ruiz, saying in a statement that the condemned man was “deeply remorseful for his crime and has labored to higher himself throughout his 14 years on demise row.”
TCADP additionally argued that jurors “didn’t hear any details about the horrific life circumstances he endured as a baby,” which they mentioned included molestation, parental neglect and abandonment, bodily, psychological, and emotional abuse, homelessness and mind injury.
Newsweek has reached out to the Texas Division of Legal Justice for remark.
