HUNTSVILLE, Texas – A Texas man convicted of fatally stabbing twin 16-year-old girls more than three decades ago was executed on Tuesday evening.
Garcia Glenn White was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m. CDT following a chemical injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the December 1989 killings of Annette and Bernette Edwards. The bodies of the twin girls and their mother, Bonita Edwards, were found in their Houston apartment.
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White, 61, was the sixth inmate put to death in the U.S. in the last 11 days. His execution took place shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, rejected three last-ditch appeals.
Asked by a warden if he had any statement, White repeatedly apologized in his final words to witnesses looking on.
“I would like to apologize for all the wrong I have done, and for the pain I've caused,” he said from the death chamber, shortly before the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began flowing into his arms.
He said he took responsibility for the slayings, regretted his actions and was praying for prison officials, officers and “for my brothers and sisters behind these walls.”
In a loud and strong voice he began singing a hymn, “I Trust in God,” singing several verses with the refrain: “I trust in God, my savior of the world, the one who never failed.” Then he urged family and friends to to “just keep pushing forward, keep loving one another," and ended by thanking prison officials and officers “for treating us like human beings.”
As the drugs began taking effect, he exhaled softly several times then began sounds like snores, several of them loud. He burped, snored quietly once and gulped. Seventeen minutes later he was pronounced dead.
Testimony showed that White went to the girls' Houston home to smoke crack with their mother, Bonita, who also was fatally stabbed. When the girls came out of their room to see what happened, White attacked them. Evidence showed White broke down the locked door of the girls’ bedroom. Authorities said he was later tied to the deaths of a grocery store owner and another woman.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who witnessed White's death, lamented that it took some 30 years to carry out the jury's death verdict as multiple appeals in White's case worked through the courts.
“The suffering of surviving (victims') family members is just unspeakable,” she said. “At least it's over.”
White’s lawyers had unsuccessfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution after lower courts previously rejected petitions for a stay. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Friday denied White’s request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant him a 30-day reprieve.
His lawyers argued that Texas’ top criminal appeals court has refused “to accept medical evidence and strong factual backing” showing White is intellectually disabled.
The Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of intellectually disabled people. But it has given states some discretion in deciding how to determine such disabilities. Justices have wrestled with how much discretion to allow.
White’s lawyers also accused the Texas appeals court of not allowing his defense team to present evidence that could spare him a death sentence, including DNA evidence that another man also was at the crime scene and scientific evidence that would show White was “likely suffering from a cocaine induced psychotic break during his actions.”
White’s lawyers also argued he is entitled to a new review of his death sentence, alleging the Texas appeals court has created a new scheme for sentencing in capital punishment cases after a recent Supreme Court ruling in another Texas death row case.
Patrick McCann, one of White's attorneys, said Tuesday that his client has spent his entire time in prison “working to be a better human being.”
The deaths of the twin girls and their mother went unsolved for about six years until White confessed to the killings after he was arrested in connection with the July 1995 death of grocery store owner Hai Van Pham, who was fatally beaten during a robbery at his business. Police said White also confessed to fatally beating another woman, Greta Williams, in 1989.
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Lozano reported from Houston.
Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70