Abel Ochoa, 47, was executed with lethal injection and pronounced dead at the state’s death chamber in Huntsville at 6.48 p.m. CST (1248 GMT), 17 years after a jury found him guilty of capital murder, according to a statement by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Ochoa was the third inmate in the United States and the second in Texas to be executed in 2020.
Texas, which executed nine people in 2019, has executed more prisoners than any other state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
The United States is the only large Western democracy to retain capital punishment.
On Aug. 4, 2002, 20 minutes after smoking crack cocaine, Ochoa went into his living room and shot to death his wife Cecilia, nine-month-old daughter Anahi, his father-in-law Bartolo and his sister-in-law Jackie, prosecutors said.
He then reloaded his .9mm Ruger handgun and chased his 7-year-old daughter Crystal into the kitchen, where he shot her four times. He had also shot his sister-in-law Alma, the lone survivor of the attack.
Police stopped Ochoa soon after the shooting as he drove his wife’s car.
“Ochoa told the arresting officer that the gun he used was at his house on the table, that he could not handle the stress anymore, and that he had gotten tired of his life,” court records showed.
Ochoa later wrote a confession in which he told authorities he was frustrated that his wife would not give him more money for drugs, court documents said.
Several state and federal courts have denied requests for the execution to be halted and appeals on Ochoa’s behalf since his conviction.
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request by Ochoa to stop the execution.
Twenty two people were executed in the United States in 2019, down from 25 in 2018 when the country ranked seventh in the world for the number of people it put to death, behind Iraq and Egypt, according to Amnesty International.
Source: Reuters, Staff, February 6, 2020
Texas executes Abel Ochoa, who killed 5 family members in Dallas shooting
Ochoa was sentenced to death after the slayings in Dallas of his relatives, including his 2 young daughters. His defense argued he was in a cocaine-induced delirium.
Texas executed Abel Ochoa on Thursday for fatally shooting his family members in their living room.
In 2002, Ochoa walked out of his Dallas bedroom, high on crack, and shot his 7-year-old and 9-month-old daughters, wife, father-in-law and 2 sisters-in-law, court records state. The only survivor was one of his wife’s sisters, who ran to a neighbor’s house after being shot.
Police arrested a cooperative Ochoa soon afterward, and he confessed to shooting his relatives. He told police he “couldn’t handle the stress anymore,” according to court rulings. 9 months later, a Dallas County jury convicted him and sentenced him to death for the murders of his wife and oldest daughter. At 47, Ochoa had been on death row for nearly 17 years.
Ochoa’s latest appeals focused on issues surrounding his upcoming execution, like paperwork errors with the death warrant and the prison system's initial refusal to let him record a mercy plea to the Texas parole board. Previously, his appellate attorneys fought for a new trial because they said no investigation into mitigating factors was conducted until just before the trial began. Mitigating evidence is often raised during the punishment trial to try to sway jurors to sentence a capital murder defendant to a life sentence instead of death. Texas and federal courts rejected the requests.
Shortly after 6 p.m., Ochoa was strapped to a gurney in the Huntsville death chamber. Several relatives of his wife watched the execution through a pane of glass, according to a prison spokesperson. Just before he was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital, he spoke his final words.
"I would like to thank God, my dad, my Lord Jesus savior for saving me and changing my life," he said. "I want to apologize to my in-laws for causing all this emotional pain. I love y’all and consider y’all my sisters I never had. I want to thank you for forgiving me."
He was pronounced dead at 6:48 p.m., 23 minutes after the drugs entered his system.
Ochoa and his wife, Cecilia, were married nearly 9 years. About 2 years before the murders, he started smoking crack, he said at trial. Over time, his drug use escalated. He took money from his wife and took out small loans to buy drugs. Months before the shooting, he walked off the job he had for more than a decade, court records state.
Ochoa tried to quit smoking crack with his family’s help. Before the killings, he had not smoked for 10 days. But on an August Sunday, after his family attended church, he convinced his wife to let him buy a small amount to curb his physical cravings, according to court filings on his testimony. He bought $10 worth of crack and smoked it in the backyard while his family gathered inside. He then went into his bedroom and came out about 20 minutes later with the family’s gun.
“The gun was already loaded, and I walked into the living room where my family was,” he wrote in his police statement. “I started shooting while they were all sitting on the couch.”
At trial, Dallas County prosecutors argued Ochoa had never gotten over learning years earlier that his wife had a child before they were together and kept it secret from him. The sister who survived the shooting said Ochoa became meaner and more aggressive toward his wife afterward. On a phone call recorded shortly after he learned of the child, he is heard threatening to shoot his wife, according to court filings.
Ochoa testified at trial that he had moved on and did not hold a grudge against his wife. His attorneys said it was his drug use that prompted the slayings, hoping mitigating evidence of his addiction would sway the jury to opt for a life sentence instead of death.
A brain scan showed Ochoa had brain damage due to extensive drug use, a doctor testified. A psychiatrist testified that he was in a “cocaine-induced delirium” during the shooting, saying his brain damage and abstaining for 10 days would bring on a state similar to psychosis.
“Mr. Ochoa was intoxicated and in a delirium,” his attorneys wrote in a 2010 briefing. “5 people did not die because Cecilia had lied to Mr. Ochoa and he happened to find out about it 5 years prior to the murders.”
A psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution said the small amount Ochoa smoked was “quite unlikely” to have brought on delirium.
“I think it’s a matter of anger. I think he was extremely frustrated with his situation,” Richard Coons, the state’s forensic psychiatrist, testified.
In his last appeals, Ochoa's attorneys tried to stop his execution because a sheriff’s deputy failed to return to the district clerk a receipt of the execution warrant, which tells the prison system when to carry out an execution. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied the motion Monday. In federal court filings, Ochoa's attorney argued for a stay because the prison system at first didn’t allow him to be videotaped for his clemency petition, in which the parole board can recommend that the governor delay his death or change his sentence to life in prison.
"Mr. Ochoa presented a compelling case for commutation to a life sentence given his deep and sincere remorse for his crime, the positive impact he has had on guards and other inmates, his personal story of redemption, and his remarkable faith and relationship with God," his attorney, Jeremy Schepers, wrote to the U.S. Supreme Court in a filing Wednesday. "Given his unique story, Mr. Ochoa retained a professional videographer to conduct a filmed interview with Mr. Ochoa to present to the Clemency Board."
At the urging of a federal judge, the prison allowed the recording last month, according to Ochoa's filing. The state has argued (and the courts have largely agreed) that the issue is moot because of that. But Ochoa's attorneys said his rights were still violated because the prison interfered with his clemency process. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal just before 6 p.m. Thursday.
✔ Ochoa becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 569th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982.
✔ Ochoa becomes the 51st condemned inmate to be put to death since Greg Abbott became Governor of Texas in 2015; the state has 7 more executions set between March 11 and May 13.
✔ Ochoa becomes the 3rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA, and the 1,515th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Sources:
Texas Tribune, Staff; Rick Halperin, February 6, 2020
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
