TEXAS: execution

Convicted killer Derrick Sonnier was executed Wednesday for the slayings of a woman and her young child at their suburban Houston apartment almost 2 decades ago.

Sonnier shook his head negatively when asked if he had any final statements. He was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m., eight minutes after the lethal dose began.

Sonnier, 40, made a similar trip to the death house 7 weeks ago but was spared when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped his scheduled punishment after lawyers raised questions about the legality of the lethal injection procedures.

That appeal subsequently was rejected, Sonnier's death date was reset for Wednesday evening and his legal avenues to avoid execution were exhausted.

Tameka Traylor, who was 8 when her mother was killed, witnessed Sonnier's execution.

"I felt a lot of anger at the present time because I didn't see any remorse for what he'd done," said Traylor. "I feel insulted by whoever decided to say that the needle injection was cruel and unusual punishment to the inmates. I feel like that was a slap in the face of everybody's family that had to go through something we had to endure. They never think what we have to go through.

"If they think that was cruel, just imagine being stabbed and beaten ...and stomped or strangled, or worst of all, losing your child."

Executions were on hold around the country for more than 7 months until the U.S. Supreme Court in April rejected an appeal from 2 Kentucky prisoners who argued lethal injection was unconstitutionally cruel.

Sonnier had maintained his innocence, but a Harris County jury was convinced evidence showed he was responsible for the 1991 murders of Melody Flowers, 27, and her 2-year-old son, Patrick. Flowers was raped, stabbed, strangled and beaten with a hammer until its handle broke. Her child was stabbed 8 times. Her body was dumped into a bathtub filled with water and the child's body was tossed on top of her.

Sonnier lived 2 doors away in the same apartment complex in Humble, just northeast of Houston.

Neighbors called police after another of Flowers' children, a 1-year-old girl with blood on her clothes, was crying at the door of the apartment. When neighbors looked through an open patio door, they saw a pool of blood on a bed.

Police knocking on doors in the area found Sonnier with his hand wrapped in a bloody towel.

"I didn't hurt her," he told officers.

But inside his place they found other bloodstained towels and a blouse identified as belonging to Flowers. DNA evidence also tied him to the slayings.

Testimony showed the Sulphur, La., native grew up in Houston, had been obsessed with Flowers and had stalked her. Witnesses testified how they repeatedly chased him away from her place and that he was known to peek through her windows and even hide inside her apartment.

"You're not going to get much other than the fact I remember representing him," Wilford Anderson, one of Sonnier's lawyers at his 1993 trial, said this week. "As for the facts of the case, it's been a very long time. There's so many cases we end up handling, there's nothing that stands out in my mind."

Sonnier initially was scheduled to die in February. That execution date,however, was withdrawn by prosecutors pending the outcome of the Kentucky case before the Supreme Court. Then on June 3, he got within about 90 minutes of punishment before Texas' highest criminal appeals court saved him.

Sonnier declined to speak with reporters in the weeks leading up to his execution. He was among at least 16 condemned prisoners with execution dates including 6 in August in the nation's most active death penalty state.

Next week, condemned inmate Larry Davis, 40, is set to die for the gang initiation robbery-slaying of Michael Barrow, 26, at Barrow's home in Amarillo 13 years ago.

Sonnier becomes the 3rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 408th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982. Sonnier becomes the 169th condemned inmate to be put to death since Rick Perry became Governor of Texas in 2001.

Sonnier becomes the 14th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1113th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

(sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)