Two Executions

The scheduled execution will come two days before the 22nd anniversary of the day, Nov. 18, 2001, when he kidnapped 5-year-old Alexandra Flores from an El Paso Walmart, strangled her to death and then burned her body. It also comes six days before his 54th birthday.

A court case notes that he "was a 32-year-old registered sex offender on probation for committing an indecency offense against an eight-year-old girl when he was arrested for the murder of the five-year-old girl in this case." A child also testified during his trial that he molested her. He did not even deny the kidnapping and [helping] to dispose of the body. 

He claimed some gang forced him to kidnap the child (threatening his family). The gang killed her. There doesn't seem to be much credibility to these claims from the coverage I saw. Criminals regularly deny they are guilty. Did I do a deep dive here? No. But, if there is a credible claim of innocence, it is usually more evident in the news coverage.   

Texas chose to go with one of those "yeah" cases for its eighth and as of now final execution for 2023. David Santiago Renteria ran out of time. His lawyers used a bunch of procedural arguments, which overturned one sentence sentence. The whole process took over twenty years.

It is unclear what filter this person had that caused him to act this way. Executing such a person to many is a depressing necessity as noted by the district attorney:

"Anyway, you look at this, it is still an execution," Hicks said. "It is still a tragedy that a person is going to lose their life. However, not just one, but two different juries came back and said that David Renteria would be a future danger to society, and both juries came back and said that there was nothing about him or what he did or his history or who he is that would mitigate what he did and mitigate the sentence of death.

The family, including the parents, will not obtain "closure" after this enterprise. We should hope they find some value but the child still is dead. As to "future danger to society," he has been in prison for twenty years. That is where he belonged. The system that executes him will also execute the seventh person Texas executed, who is more sympathetic. 

Nonetheless, every execution is opposed by someone. I myself oppose the death penalty as an institution. People who do horrible things sometimes should be kept away from the general public. 

Renteria's "future dangerousness" to small children in prison is unclear.  His time in prison appears to have been uneventful, except that it provided him a safer space in certain respects to live the best life possible.  

The system that executes the "good ones" will execute many who are much more dubious options. Sometimes, you do things that are risky because on balance it is necessary. The death penalty rarely looks this way, especially since so few nations (or states of this one) actively practice it today. What do all these places do with the "easy" cases? Renteria isn't Timothy McVeigh.  He isn't a serial killer. He deserves to be in prison, not dead.

SCOTUS tossed aside a late Hail Mary procedural claim. This one is not as strong as the last. But, in my view, a few words before "denied" is warranted when the result is an execution. A second argument that the Texas supply of lethal injection drugs is not viable enough was also ignored, just like it was when another person made it earlier in the year.   

McWhorter, 48, was convicted in 1994 of capital murder in the 1993 robbery and slaying of Edward Lee Williams in Marshall County. McWhorter had turned 18 three months before his crime. He and two juvenile co-defendants, a 16-year-old and the 15-year-old son of the victim, had planned to rob and murder Williams in his home.

Alabama's execution is one more people are likely to question.

Thirty years ago (see Glossip v. Gloss, Breyer dissenting), some teens plotted a robbery/murder. What is the legitimate public purpose in now executing the one that happened to be a bit older?  

The original jury split 10-2 (unanimous juries not required then). Alabama considered nineteen the age of majority. A final lawsuit cited this to argue that constitutionally he was a minor. But, Roper v. Simmons did not draw the line at "the age of majority under law."  The cut-off was 18.

I am sympathetic to the argument. It is just not strong enough to convince the Supreme Court, even one somewhat less conservative. A final Hail Mary arguing that the death warrant was dropped too late (looks rather technical even to me) also failed. Alabama has thirty hours now to execute after past litigation led to last-minute problems.

SCOTUS handled things (as usual without comment) by the afternoon. They both were executed, the Texas person still speaking of his "murder" in his final statement.  

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There is one more execution scheduled for this year at the very end of the month. As of now, there are no executions in December. That would be twenty-four, one-third being from Texas. 

An Order List will drop on Monday. Unless something truly significant warrants it (as with the code of conduct, this is possible), I'll wait until then to talk about another order of a bit of note that dropped today.