Death Penalty News

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A Texas inmate with a history of violence against women was executed Wednesday evening for fatally shooting his wife, who had feared she would never get out of her marriage alive. John Gardner, 64, received a lethal injection at 6:30 p.m. CST at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the January 2005 slaying of Tammy Gardner. Prosecutors said the couple was getting divorced when Gardner broke into his wife’s North Texas home and shot her in the head as she was sitting in bed. She died two days later at a hospital. Gardner became the first inmate put to death this year in Texas and the U.S. Seven other executions are scheduled in the next few months in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Last year, 22 inmates were executed in the U.S., with nine inmates being put to death in Texas, the most of any state. His appellate attorneys had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, alleging his trial lawyers were ineffective, particularly f...

John Gardner, 64, is set to be put to death for the 2005 murder of his estranged wife. His lawyers have argued the crime wasn't eligible for the death penalty. Texas, the state that has put to death more people than any other by far, is scheduled to carry out the nation’s first execution of the decade Wednesday. John Gardner is set to be executed for the 2005 Collin County murder of his soon-to-be ex-wife. Tammy Gardner was shot and killed in her home weeks before the couple’s divorce was finalized, according to court records. She had called 911 before she died to say her husband had shot her. John Gardner had a history of domestic violence, including the shooting of a previous wife who later died from her injuries, court records state. The 64-year-old man has no pending appeals, according to his lawyer. He had argued for years that his crime should not have been prosecuted as a capital murder, which is the only crime in Texas that can result in the death penalty...

In the months before her death, Tammy Gardner told friends and family, "The only way I'm going to get out of this relationship is by being dead." Her husband, John Steven "Steve" Gardner, terrorized Tammy. He beat her and raped her and promised to kill her if she left him. Nonetheless, Tammy found the courage to file for divorce. It was a couple of weeks from being final in 2005 when Gardner broke into her trailer on a rural road outside McKinney and shot her in the head. He was sentenced to death the following year and is scheduled for execution on Jan. 15. In Texas and in the country at large, about half of all murdered women are killed by their intimate partners. The Texas Council on Family Violence estimated that in 2016, in cases where there was enough data to make a determination, 62% of intimate partner murders happened within 2 weeks of an attempt to end the relationship. This was the case for Tammy Gardner. RELATED | Texas: John Steven Gardne...