Texas | Attorneys for Tanner Horner, sentenced to death for Athena Strand's murder, are requesting a new trial

The defense argues that extensive media coverage prevented Horner from receiving a fair trial

Defense attorneys for Tanner Horner, the former FedEx contract delivery driver sentenced to death for the 2022 kidnapping and murder of 7-year-old Athena Strand, are asking a judge to grant him a new trial.

The motion argues that extensive media coverage surrounding the case prevented Horner from receiving a fair trial. Defense attorneys said some potential witnesses declined to testify because of the publicity.

Horner's trial was moved from Wise County to Tarrant County because of widespread attention the case received, including on social media.

Prosecutors with the Wise County District Attorney's Office have asked the court to deny the request, arguing there is no legal rule that bars media coverage of criminal proceedings. A judge is expected to rule on the motion in the coming days.

Separately, Horner's attorneys have filed an appeal with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Under Texas law, all death penalty cases automatically receive review by the state's highest criminal court.

What did Tanner Horner do? What happened to Athena Strand?

A Tarrant County jury took less than three hours in May to sentence Horner to death after he pleaded guilty to capital murder.

Jurors unanimously found Horner would pose a continuing threat to society and determined there were no mitigating circumstances that warranted a sentence of life without parole instead of the death penalty.

During the trial, prosecutor James Stainton said Horner delivered a package of Barbie dolls to Athena's home in Paradise, a town of fewer than 500 residents about 60 miles northwest of Dallas, on Nov. 30, 2022. Stainton told jurors that Horner then kidnapped Athena and assaulted her for more than an hour before using a pair of muddy shoes to "beat the life out of her," holding up the shoes as evidence in court.

"And I think that is key to this entire case. If the facts were not bad enough, if the sexual assault wasn't bad enough, the level of violence that one person can inflict on a child, including stomping them with a pair of shoes," he said.

Texas Ranger Job Espinoza testified that cameras captured Horner stuffing Athena's clothes into a backpack, which was later found at his home, and cleaning the FedEx van after the attack.

Horner told someone over the phone that he cleaned the truck because he threw up in it, according to video footage. Horner also returned to the scene, where a woman told him the area was blocked off because of the kidnapping.

"Are you serious?" he said in video shown to the jury.

After he was caught, Horner spun a "web of lies" and told multiple different stories about what happened to Athena and where her body was during the police investigation, Stainton said.

At one point, Horner told investigators that he took Athena after he accidentally hit her with his vehicle so that she wouldn't report him. He said she wasn't seriously injured, but he panicked and strangled her after she said she would tell her father he hit her. He also concocted an alter ego named "Zero," who he said was responsible for the killing.

Surveillance video showed Horner driving his FedEx delivery truck to Athena's home before returning minutes later with the 7-year-old. The footage captured Horner picking her up and placing her inside the vehicle. After the abduction, Horner covered the truck's internal camera, leaving investigators with audio recordings only for the remainder of the incident.

Athena's first questions to Horner were "What are you doing?" and "Are you a kidnapper?” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, NBC DFW and Fox 4. At one point, he told the girl, "You're really pretty. You know that?”

He could be heard on the recording telling the girl, who had begun to cry, to remove her shirt and threatening to hurt her if she screamed. Athena repeatedly told Horner no and asked to go home to her mother. Later, "Jingle Bell Rock" played from the radio as Horner told the screaming Athena to "shut up" or he would hurt her more, reported the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Athena was found naked in the Trinity River near an area called Bobo's Crossing, about 12 to 13 miles away from her home, Stainton and former Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin, a witness in the trial, said. Medical examiner Jennifer Dwyer testified that she died of blunt force injuries, smothering, and strangulation.

During closing arguments, defense attorneys urged jurors to spare Horner's life, citing his difficult upbringing, stress at home, and autism diagnosis. Prosecutors argued Horner showed Athena no mercy and asked jurors to impose the death penalty.

Following the sentencing, Athena's uncle, Elijah Strand, addressed Horner directly: "I want you to know that you are nothing. You are a footnote in Athena's story. Her name will forever be celebrated, and everyone will forget you."

Source: USA Today, Brandi D. Addison, N'dea Yancey-Bragg, Mary Walrath-Holdridge, July 22, 2026

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

Death Penalty News For a World without the Death Penalty

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.

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.

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.

Japan: Capital punishment for a minor

Death chamber at Tokyo Detention Center The Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the death sentence given in a lay judge trial to a 24-year-old man for murders he committed when he was a minor raises questions about the lay judge trial system and capital punishment. These include whether the lay judges correctly understood the spirit of the Juvenile Law in sentencing the defendant to death. It was the 1st death sentence handed down on a minor in a lay judge trial. The murders took place in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in 2010 when Yutaro Chiba was 18 - meaning he fell under the purview of the Juvenile Law. Chiba was convicted of entering his ex-girlfriend's house and stabbing to death the girl's sister and a female friend of the girl with a butcher knife, seriously injuring a male friend of the sister and abducting the girl. Prosecutors said Chiba killed the victims because they were trying to separate him and his former girlfriend. Since Chiba pleaded n...

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

Texas: The inmates who refused to die quietly and had to be gassed out of their cells before execution

Former crime reporter Michelle Lyons, who witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, reveals the desperate acts of death row prisoners who refused to accept their fate After spending years or often decades locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, most Death Row inmates go willingly to their executions. However, some refuse to die quietly - with officers forced to gas them out of cells, strap up their heads and even give chase across prison grounds. Michelle Lyons, who has witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, exclusively tells Sun Online how certain inmates "fight like hell" in their last moments. On most occasions, Michelle watched from the witness area, with the killers already on the gurney - the stretcher where they'd be given a lethal injection. Seven prisoners once tried to escape from the Row in Huntsville - with one shoving magazines and newspapers under his clothes to help him roll over razor-wire fences. Others have had to b...

Florida executes Dennis Sochor

Man, 74, becomes oldest inmate executed in Florida in state’s 10th lethal injection this year Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was 1 of 3 older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state. Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said. He was convicted of killing a woman on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Oldest inmate set to be executed in Florida will face strict spending limit for final meal

An entire category of food is also off-limits for final meal requests in Florida Florida is currently preparing to execute its oldest inmate later today (July 14), a 74-year-old convicted murderer who has been on death row since the 1980s—but his final meal will be limited by a strict budget. Dennis Sochor is scheduled to be put to death later today, making history as the oldest inmate to ever be executed in the state. The criminal, who has been on death row for nearly 40 years, will be administered the lethal three-drug injection, with the process due to begin at around 6pm.

Idaho | Death row prisoners sue over state's new firing squad

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Days after Idaho made the switch to a firing squad for executions, two Idaho death row prisoners next in line to be put to death sued the state prison system, saying its director withheld information about how she settled on the specifics for carrying out the method. Attorneys for prisoners Thomas Creech and Gerald Pizzuto filed suit this week in state district court against Idaho Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick. In the filing, they called her approval of an updated standard operating procedure for the firing squad and lethal injection as a backup method “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion and in excess of the statutory authority of the agency.”

Florida to execute William Silvia for 2006 shooting murder of wife

William Silvia, convicted of the 2006 shooting murder of his wife, Patricia, is scheduled to die by lethal injection in August, according to a death warrant filed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on July 17. If all previously scheduled executions go as planned, Silvia will be the 13th person put to death in Florida this year, following a record-breaking 19 executions in 2025. Silvia, now 61, went to his estranged wife's mother's house in Seminole County to attempt to reconcile with her, but first he calmly bought a 12-gauge shotgun and ammunition, prosecutors said. After talking to Patricia Silvia, Silvia got the shotgun from his truck, shot her mother, Betty Woodard, in the face, and fatally shot Patricia in the head, court records show. Woodard, who was standing in front of her daughter, lost her left eye and the top portion of her nose.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog