Texas executes Robert Harris

Robert Harris

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the execution Thursday of an ex-con who confessed to killing five people at a Dallas-area car wash a week after he was fired from his job there.

Harris, 40, was convicted of two of the five slayings 12 years ago at the Mi-T-Fine Car Wash in Irving. He also was charged with abducting and killing a woman months before the March 2000 spree and led police to her remains.

Robert Wayne Harris, 40, received lethal injection less than two hours after the U.S. Supreme Court refused appeals to halt his punishment.

Harris expressed love to his brother and three friends who were watching through a window.

"I'm going home. I'm going home," Harris said. "Don't worry about me. I'll be alright. God bless, and the Texas Rangers."

He was pronounced dead at 6:43 p.m., 25 minutes after the lethal dose of pentobarbital began.

Harris is the eighth Texas prisoner executed this year. Another is set to die next week in the nation's most-active capital punishment state.

Harris didn't deny the slayings, but his lawyer contended in appeals he was mentally impaired and should be spared because of a Supreme Court ban on execution of mentally impaired people. Attorney Lydia Brandt also questioned the makeup of Harris' jury at his 2000 trial in Dallas, contending prosecutors improperly removed black prospective jurors from serving on the panel. Harris is black.

State attorneys opposed the appeals, saying IQ tests disputed the mental impairment claims and that no racial component was involved in jury selection.

Court records showed Harris was 18 when he went to prison for burglary and other charges and after violating probation. He spent most of his time there in administrative segregation, a confinement level for troublesome inmates. Testimony at his trial showed he set fire to his cell, assaulted and threatened to kill prison staff and inmates, dealt drugs and engaged in sexual misconduct.

Harris declined to speak from prison with reporters as Thursday's execution date neared. A few weeks ago, he went to a prison visiting area for a TV interview, but changed his mind and crawled under a shelf in a tiny interview cage. Officers had to remove him.

Harris becomes the 8th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 485th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 2012. Harris becomes the 246th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since Rick Perry became governor in 2001.

Harris becomes the 29th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1306th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Source: AP, Sept. 20, 2012

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