Death Penalty

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of execution for death row inmate Rolando Ruiz more than an hour after he was to be executed.

The decision to issue the stay was based on claims that jurors at Ruiz's trial were not told about potentially mitigating evidence, including relatives' claims that Ruiz was neglected and abused as a child and a psychologist's report that stated he was heavily influenced by drugs and alcohol.

Ruiz was convicted for the fatal shooting of Theresa Rodriguez, nearly 15 years ago on July 14, 1992 and was scheduled to be put to death at 6 p.m

Ruiz, who had a history of alcohol and drug dependency, implicated the victim's husband and brother-in-law for hiring him for what authorities said was their plan to collect more than $250,000 in life insurance.

Lawyers of Ruiz argued that a state-appointed lawyer in earlier appeals failed to identify Ruiz's substance abuse and poor childhood as mitigating evidence jurors should have been allowed to consider before they decided on a death sentence.

But the attorney general's office rejected those arguments as not sufficiently compelling, stating in a response that

"Much of the proffered evidence was presented to the jury in some form, was otherwise irrelevant, or was potentially double-edged in nature."

An affidavit that lawyers had hoped would help save Ruiz instead was cited in the response as evidence of his "complete disregard for humanity." An aunt had claimed in the affidavit that Ruiz suffered an unstable and rough childhood and at one point was placed in a shelter.

A few days before the murder, according to the document, Ruiz's mother was pressuring him to get a job and told him to "bring money into the house or get out."

And so, investigators said, Ruiz killed Rodriguez and then went to play basketball for the rest of the evening. The next day he took his mother some money and used the rest of it to buy cocaine, according to the affidavit.

"Ruiz was unwilling to work for a living, so he committed this murder for only ($2,000) to avoid getting kicked out of his house or having to get a job," the attorney general's office stated in its denial.

The response also noted that Ruiz at his trial blamed himself for his drug use and claimed that he came from a good family and was not physically or mentally abused.

Rolando Ruiz's execution would have been the 19^th this year and the 398^th since the state of the Texas resumed the use of the death penalty.

18 death row inmates have already been executed in Texas this year and 12 others are awaiting execution which are all slated for this year.

Since the United States Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 1086 people have been executed and 397 of those were executed in Texas. Overall, the number of executions in Texas constitutes more than one third of the total executions carried out in USA.

The paradox is that United States has ratified numerous international instruments like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which recognises the right to life as a basic human right yet executions have been and are still being carried out in the regional discourse

You can read more at the San Antonio Express-News

Abolish Intern DC