Texas Executes Robert Fratta

A former suburban Houston police officer was executed Tuesday for hiring two people to kill his estranged wife nearly 30 years ago amid a contentious divorce and custody battle.

Robert Fratta, 65, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the November 1994 fatal shooting of his wife, Farah. He was pronounced dead at 7:49 p.m., 24 minutes after the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began flowing into his arms.

For about three minutes before the execution began, Fratta’s spiritual adviser, Barry Brown, prayed over Fratta, who was strapped to the death chamber gurney with intravenous needles in each arm.

Brown, his prayer book on the pillow next to Fratta's head and his right hand resting on Fratta's right hand, asked for prayers for “hearts that have been broken ... for people who grieved and those who will grieve in days ahead.” He asked God to “be merciful to Bobby.”

Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Fratta replied: “No.”

Brown resumed praying as the lethal drugs began and Fratta, his eyes closed, took a deep breath and then snored loudly 6 times. Then all movement stopped.

Prosecutors say Fratta organized the murder-for-hire plot in which a middleman, Joseph Prystash, hired the shooter, Howard Guidry. Farah Fratta, 33, was shot twice in the head in her home’s garage in the Houston suburb of Atascocita. Robert Fratta, who was a public safety officer for Missouri City, had long claimed he was innocent.

The punishment was delayed for little more than an hour until the last of a flurry of final-day appeals cleared the U.S. Supreme Court and Texas' highest courts, the Texas Supreme Court and Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Fratta’s lawyers argued unsuccessfully that prosecutors withheld evidence that a trial witness had been hypnotized by investigators, leading her to change her initial recollection that she saw two men at the murder scene as well as a getaway driver.

Prosecutors have argued the hypnosis produced no new information and no new identification. They had also said that Fratta had repeatedly expressed his desire to see his wife dead and asked several acquaintances if they knew anyone who would kill her, telling one friend, “I’ll just kill her, and I’ll do my time and when I get out, I’ll have my kids,” according to court records. Prystash and Guidry were also sent to death row for the slaying.

Fratta was also 1 of 4 Texas death row inmates who sued to stop the state’s prison system from using what they allege are expired and unsafe execution drugs. That lawsuit also failed late Tuesday,

The Supreme Court and lower courts previously rejected appeals from Fratta’s lawyers that sought to review claims arguing insufficient evidence and faulty jury instructions were used to convict him. His attorneys also unsuccessfully argued that a juror in his case was not impartial and that ballistics evidence didn’t tie him to the murder weapon.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles last week unanimously declined to commute Fratta’s death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant a 60-day reprieve.

Fratta was first sentenced to death in 1996, but his conviction was overturned by a federal judge who ruled that confessions from his co-conspirators shouldn’t have been admitted into evidence. In the same ruling, the judge wrote that “trial evidence showed Fratta to be egotistical, misogynistic, and vile, with a callous desire to kill his wife.”

He was retried and resentenced to death in 2009.

Andy Kahan, the director of victim services and advocacy for Crime Stoppers of Houston, said that Farah Fratta’s father, Lex Baquer, who died in 2018, raised Robert and Farah Fratta’s 3 children with his wife.

Kahan, Fratta's son, Bradley Baquer, and Farah's brother, Zain Baquer, were among witnesses watching Fratta die. Fratta never acknowledged them or looked at them as they stood at a window to the death chamber.

“Bob was a coward in 1994, when he arranged the murder for hire of his estranged wife," Kahan said after the execution. “And 28-plus years later, he still was a coward tonight. When he was offered an opportunity to at least extend an olive branch to his son that he knew was watching this.

“And he still chose the coward's way out. He could have said: ‘I’m sorry.'”

— Fratta was the 1st inmate put to death this year in Texas and the 579th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982.

— He becomes the 61st condemned inmate to be put to death since Greg Abbott became governor of Texas in 2015. There are currently 8 more executions scheduled in Texas for later this year.

— Fratta becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,560th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff; Rick Halperin, January 10, 2023

Robert Fratta's Final Words Before Texas Execution

Texas executed a former police officer on Tuesday for hiring two people to kill his estranged wife nearly 30 years ago.

Robert Fratta, 65, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the November 1994 fatal shooting of his estranged wife, Farah.

According to the Associated Press, Fratta was pronounced dead at 7:49 p.m.—24 minutes after the lethal dose of pentobarbital began flowing into his arms.

Fratta's spiritual adviser, Barry Brown, prayed over Fratta for about three minutes before the execution began, the AP reported.

Brown, who had his prayer book on the pillow next to Fratta's head and his right hand resting on Fratta's right hand as he was strapped to the death chamber gurney, asked for prayers for "hearts that have been broken ... for people who grieved and those who will grieve in days ahead." He also asked God to "be merciful to Bobby."

Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Fratta said: "No."

Brown then resumed praying as the lethal drugs began flowing into Fratta's arms. Fratta took a deep breath and then snored loudly six times before all movement stopped, according to the AP.

In an interview with Death Penalty Action that was recorded on Sunday, Fratta said he had once supported the death penalty but his experience on death row had changed his mind.

"It's been kind of an enlightening experience as far as, I never gave any thought to the death penalty even though I was a police officer," he said.

"Now that I'm going through it, I can understand how so ridiculously tormenting it is for the inmates to be put through this."

He added: "To have you knowing the day and time and everything that you're going to die, and it's just prolonged, and everything that they put you through beforehand—this is torture."

Fratta also said he believed there were systemic issues that prevented his "meritorious" claims to halt his execution from being heard.

Source: Newsweek, K. Rhaman, January 11, 2022

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Florida executes Dominick Occhicone

Florida executes 2 men in a day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida's death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term. STARKE, Fla. — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, the last an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history. Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of killing a young girl.

Two Executions In Six Hours: Florida Set For Historical Double Execution Tuesday

Florida is preparing to execute two death row inmates on Tuesday, July 28, in an action that would mark the state’s first double execution in more than 60 years. Former police officer James Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12 p.m., followed six hours later by 80-year-old Dominick Occhicone at 6 p.m. If carried out, these will mark the 39th and 40th executions under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the 11th and 12th in the state since the beginning of 2026. In response, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) has launched petition and letter-writing efforts asking DeSantis to halt both procedures. The group has organized two public vigils outside Florida State Prison in Raiford, set for 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., contingent on whether stays are issued.

Florida | 49 years on death row, killer of Bonita Springs teen learns death date

A Fort Myers man on death row for nearly five decades learned his execution date as Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his order Thursday, July 30. Harold Gene Lucas, then 24, shot and killed his 16-year-old girlfriend, Anthia Jill Piper in Bonita Springs on August 14, 1976. Lucas was 24 when he was charged in Piper's shooting death at her parents' home on Aug. 14, 1976. The execution is set for Sept. 1 in a state that has accelerated its pace under DeSantis the past two years, with a record of 19 executions in 2025. Piper was shot seven times by Lucas, who claimed to be intoxicated.

Florida executes James Duckett

Double execution: 1st of 2 inmates is put to death in Florida Florida has executed James Duckett, a 68-year-old former cop convicted of killing an 11-year-old girl in 1987. The state is set to execute an 80-year-old man 6 hours later for a 1986 murder. Florida carried out the 1st double execution in more than 60 years, executing former police officer James Duckett and later scheduling the execution of 80‑year‑old Dominick Occhicone, amid Governor Ron DeSantis’s aggressive push to increase death penalties in the state. Florida has put to death the 1st of 2 inmates in the state's 1st double execution in more than 60 years amid an aggressive death penalty push by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

Iran erects iron gallows in Isfahan protest square

An iron gallows has been erected in an Isfahan square where protests erupted in January. Families of several of the 10 remaining prisoners sentenced to death have been summoned for farewell visits. An iron gallows erected in Ali-Khani Square in the central Iranian city of Isfahan has raised fears that the regime is preparing to publicly execute protesters arrested during nationwide demonstrations in January. Sources who spoke with Iran International said large numbers of security forces had been deployed in the area, while the families of several prisoners sentenced to death had been summoned to the prison for farewell visits.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Idaho | How Bryan Kohberger’s Guilty Plea Move Could Be His Death Sentence

If Bryan Kohberger successfully withdraws his guilty plea and goes to trial for the murders of four University of Idaho students, it could lead to him being sentenced to death, experts told Newsweek . Kohberger, 31, filed a handwritten petition on Monday from the Idaho Maximum Security Penitentiary, where he is serving four consecutive life sentences for the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen in a rental home near the university's campus in Moscow, Idaho, in 2022. Kohberger pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbings just over a year ago, a month before jury selection was set to start.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog