Post by MXB on Aug 29, 2006 10:07:08 GMT -5
'Railroad Killer' Resendiz Put to Death in Texas
By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer
1:37 AM PDT, June 28, 2006
HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- A train-hopping serial killer linked to 15 murders asked his victim's families for forgiveness moments before his execution.
"I want to ask if it is in your heart to forgive me," Angel Maturino Resendiz said from his death chamber gurney Tuesday, looking toward victims' relatives. "You don't have to. I know I allowed the devil to rule my life."
"You did not deserve this," said Resendiz, 46, a Mexican drifter known as the "Railroad Killer." "I deserve what I am getting."
Resendiz, who had described himself as half-man, half-angel and who had told psychiatrists he couldn't be executed because he didn't believe he could die, received lethal injection for the slaying of physician Claudia Benton in 1998.
Benton, 39, was stabbed with a kitchen knife, bludgeoned with a 2-foot bronze statue and raped in her Houston home, down the street from a railroad track.
"This is not human behavior but something I can only say is evil contained in human form, a creature without a soul, no conscience, no sense of remorse, no regard for the sanctity of human life," said Benton's husband, George, who witnessed the execution.
Her slaying came during a deadly spree in 1998 and 1999 that earned Resendiz a spot on the FBI's Most Wanted list as authorities searched for a murderer who slipped across the U.S. border and roamed the country by freight train.
Her death was among eight in Texas linked to Resendiz. There were two more in both Illinois and Florida, and one each in Kentucky, California and Georgia.
Authorities realized they were pursuing a serial killer when DNA evidence tied Resendiz to Benton's murder and the killings of a church pastor and his wife. They had been beaten with a sledgehammer as they slept in their house near tracks outside Houston.
A month later, Resendiz walked across the international bridge at El Paso from Mexico and surrendered to police as part of a deal his sister arranged.
Resendiz said some murders were in response to the deaths of the Branch Davidians in Waco, others on Serbian atrocities. Others he blamed on his anti-abortion beliefs or because he believed the victims may have been homosexual.
The execution -- the 13th of the year in the nation's most active death penalty state -- was delayed almost two hours before the U.S. Supreme Court rejected several last-day appeals.
Resendiz's lead appeals lawyer, Jack Zimmermann, had argued that his client was delusional. Federal courts have ruled inmates are ineligible for execution if they don't understand they will be put to death, when they are being put to death and why they are being put to death.
The court also rejected an appeal by the Houston-based consul general of Mexico questioning the Mexican national's competency and challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection process as cruel and unusual punishment. Capital punishment is not allowed in Mexico.
Mexico's Foreign Relations Department protested the execution. In a statement, the agency said, "The execution was carried out despite the existence of medical evidence of severe mental problems that, in principle, should have excluded the application of this penalty."
By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer
1:37 AM PDT, June 28, 2006
HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- A train-hopping serial killer linked to 15 murders asked his victim's families for forgiveness moments before his execution.
"I want to ask if it is in your heart to forgive me," Angel Maturino Resendiz said from his death chamber gurney Tuesday, looking toward victims' relatives. "You don't have to. I know I allowed the devil to rule my life."
"You did not deserve this," said Resendiz, 46, a Mexican drifter known as the "Railroad Killer." "I deserve what I am getting."
Resendiz, who had described himself as half-man, half-angel and who had told psychiatrists he couldn't be executed because he didn't believe he could die, received lethal injection for the slaying of physician Claudia Benton in 1998.
Benton, 39, was stabbed with a kitchen knife, bludgeoned with a 2-foot bronze statue and raped in her Houston home, down the street from a railroad track.
"This is not human behavior but something I can only say is evil contained in human form, a creature without a soul, no conscience, no sense of remorse, no regard for the sanctity of human life," said Benton's husband, George, who witnessed the execution.
Her slaying came during a deadly spree in 1998 and 1999 that earned Resendiz a spot on the FBI's Most Wanted list as authorities searched for a murderer who slipped across the U.S. border and roamed the country by freight train.
Her death was among eight in Texas linked to Resendiz. There were two more in both Illinois and Florida, and one each in Kentucky, California and Georgia.
Authorities realized they were pursuing a serial killer when DNA evidence tied Resendiz to Benton's murder and the killings of a church pastor and his wife. They had been beaten with a sledgehammer as they slept in their house near tracks outside Houston.
A month later, Resendiz walked across the international bridge at El Paso from Mexico and surrendered to police as part of a deal his sister arranged.
Resendiz said some murders were in response to the deaths of the Branch Davidians in Waco, others on Serbian atrocities. Others he blamed on his anti-abortion beliefs or because he believed the victims may have been homosexual.
The execution -- the 13th of the year in the nation's most active death penalty state -- was delayed almost two hours before the U.S. Supreme Court rejected several last-day appeals.
Resendiz's lead appeals lawyer, Jack Zimmermann, had argued that his client was delusional. Federal courts have ruled inmates are ineligible for execution if they don't understand they will be put to death, when they are being put to death and why they are being put to death.
The court also rejected an appeal by the Houston-based consul general of Mexico questioning the Mexican national's competency and challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection process as cruel and unusual punishment. Capital punishment is not allowed in Mexico.
Mexico's Foreign Relations Department protested the execution. In a statement, the agency said, "The execution was carried out despite the existence of medical evidence of severe mental problems that, in principle, should have excluded the application of this penalty."