11 January 2023 :
Robert Fratta, 65, White, was executed.
Fratta, a former police officer, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the November 1994 fatal shooting of his wife, Farah. He was pronounced dead at 7:49 p.m., 24 minutes after the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began flowing into his arms.
For about three minutes before the execution began, Fratta’s spiritual adviser, Barry Brown, prayed over Fratta, who was strapped to the death chamber gurney with intravenous needles in each arm.
Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Fratta had replied: “No.”
Prosecutors say Fratta organized the murder-for-hire plot in which a middleman, Joseph Prystash, hired the shooter, Howard Guidry. Farah Fratta, 33, was shot twice in the head in her home’s garage.
Prystash and Guidry were also sentenced to death. Fratta is the 1st to face execution.
There had been some doubt if Fratta's execution would take place after civil court Judge Catherine Mauzy in Austin earlier Tuesday issued a temporary injunction in the lawsuit that would have prevented the state's prison system from using what she believed is likely expired and medically compromised pentobarbital - the drug Texas uses in its lethal injection.
The execution was carried out after Texas' top criminal appeals court overturned the injunction and the state's supreme court rejected an appeal. Mauzy's order conflicted with last week's edict from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that barred her from issuing any orders in the lawsuit that would halt any execution.
The punishment was delayed for little more than an hour until the last of a flurry of final-day appeals cleared the U.S. Supreme Court and Texas’ highest courts, the Texas Supreme Court and Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Fratta was first sentenced to death in 1996, but his conviction was overturned by a federal judge who ruled that confessions from his co-conspirators shouldn’t have been admitted into evidence. He was retried and resentenced to death in 2009.
Fratta becomes the 1st inmate to be put death this year in Texas, the 579th overall since Texas resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982, the 2nd inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,560st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Eight other executions are scheduled in Texas for later this year.
https://apnews.com/article/texas-state-government-houston-legal-proceedings-95afdfe8a13c8ee253f466661e666f5c
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/crime/article/robert-fratta-execution-expired-lethal-injection-17708693.php
