15 September 2019 :

Mark Soliz, 37, Hispanic, was executed. He had been sentenced to death on March 23, 2012 (see) in Johnson County in the fatal shooting of Nancy Weatherly, 61, during a robbery on June 29, 2010 of her rural home. At his trial, prosecutors said Soliz and another man, Jose Ramos, committed several crimes in the Fort Worth area over eight days in June 2010. After fatally shooting a deliveryman around 6 a.m. June 29, 2010, the duo later that morning drove in a stolen car to Weatherly’s home. Prosecutors say Soliz and Ramos forced their way into the home at gunpoint and ransacked the place, taking a television, cellphones and credit cards. Police say Soliz confessed to killing Weatherly and ballistics and fingerprint evidence also tied him to the slaying. Ramos was sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of Weatherly and the deliveryman, Ruben Martinez. Authorities say the 2 fatal shootings capped an 8-day crime spree that stretched across two counties and included at least 13 separate offenses, including several non-fatal shootings, burglary, robbery and car-jackings. During a five-minute final statement, Soliz apologized profusely from the death chamber gurney. Texas executed Soliz after a federal appeals court denied him a stay and dismissed his claim that his lifelong mental impairments resulting from fetal alcohol syndrome should exempt him from execution. Soliz had sought a stay and to be resentenced to life without parole, arguing that his mother’s alcohol consumption during her pregnancy impaired his intellectual development in a manner that was the “‘functional equivalent’ of conditions already recognized as disqualifying exemptions to the death penalty.” Soliz becomes the 6th person executed this year in Texas, the 564th person executed in Texas since the state resumed executions in 1982, the 15th person executed this year in the USA, and the 1,505th person executed since the United States resumed executions in 1977.