Texas: Gregory Wright executed

Proclaiming his innocence, condemned prisoner Gregory Wright was executed Thursday evening for the fatal stabbing and robbery of a Dallas-area woman who tried to help him when he was homeless.

"There's been a lot of confusion who done this," Wright said from the death chamber gurney.

Then, as he has for years, he declared a fellow homeless man, John Adams, was responsible for the murder of Donna Vick.

"I never sold anything to anyone. My only act or involvement was not telling on him. John Adams was the one that killed Donna Vick. The evidence proves that. ... I was in the bathroom when he attacked. I ran into the bedroom. By the time I came in, when I tried to help her with first aid it was too late."

He said an innocent man was being put to death and said he loved his family. "I'll be waiting on y'all. I am finished talking."

9 minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow, he was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. CDT.

Wright, 42, was 1 of 2 homeless men convicted of killing Donna Duncan Vick, 52, at her home in DeSoto, just south of Dallas, in 1997. The woman was known for helping the needy and had given Wright food, clothing and money after he said she spotted him on a street corner holding a cardboard sign offering to work for food.

Wright, an out of work truck driver, maintained he was innocent of the killing and blamed it on a fellow homeless man, John Adams. Adams was tried separately and also was convicted and sentenced to death.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Wright less than an hour before he was scheduled to be taken to the Texas death chamber. Other federal courts had rejected similar appeals and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also refused a clemency request for Wright on a 7-0 vote Wednesday.

"The truth doesn't matter," Wright told The Associated Press recently from a visiting cage outside death row, saying he was stunned at the outcome of his 1998 trial in Dallas. "I couldn't believe what was happening. I'm very upset at a number of different people. I don't blame the legal system. I blame individuals running the legal system. ... I am innocent."

Adams, who implicated Wright as the killer, earlier this year recanted his statement against Wright. Then at a court hearing last month, he reversed his recantation.

"The co-defendant has been a bit erratic," Meg Penrose, one of Wright's lawyers, said Thursday.

She said she understood demands for an execution in the case "but I thought justice demanded we executed the right person."

"I guess there's a difference of emphasis," Penrose said. "I'd rather wait 30 years and make sure we have the proper individual executed than wait 12 and hedge our bets. I don't like the rush to review that we're at. A person who is innocent is rushed to the gurney and is executed."

New DNA tests requested by Wright's lawyers, which put off Wright's execution initially scheduled for last month, "on the whole, confirmed Wright's guilt," state attorneys told the appeals courts in their arguments. Penrose contended the tests were ambiguous.

At Wright's trial, jurors were told that after the killing, the 2 men packed up items from inside the house, drove off in Vick's car and traded the loot for crack cocaine.

A day and a half later, Adams turned himself in to police, implicated Wright, directed officers to Vick's home and helped in the recovery of her car. DNA tests of blood on the steering wheel of the car was shown to belong to Wright. His bloody fingerprint also was found on a pillowcase on her bed. Wright's lawyers disputed the accuracy of the fingerprint evidence.

From death row, Wright refused to talk about specifics of the crime, saying only that it stemmed from an argument between Vick and Adams over Adams' smoking.

"This should have been finished long ago because there's no question about his guilt and there should be no question about the jury's verdict either," said Greg Davis, who prosecuted Wright. "He and Adams had been living on the streets together. So what he does, he talks his way into the victim's home and then he gets Adams in there, too. Both them actually stabbed her to death."

Wright becomes the 14th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas, the 2nd this week and the 419th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on Dec. 7, 1982. Wright becomes the 180th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since Rick Perry became governor in 2001.

6 more men are set to die in November; scheduled to die next is Elkie Taylor, 47, on Nov. 6. Taylor was condemned for strangling a 65-year-old Fort Worth man in 1993 with 2 wire coat hangers and then leading police on a four-hour chase in a stolen 18-wheeler. Authorities said the robbery and murder of Otis Flake at Flake's Fort Worth home was the second killing linked to Taylor over an 11-day period. Wright becomes the 30th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1129th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin