Death Penalty News

Taylor Parker is set to become the 7th woman on death row in Texas, following her sentencing Wednesday in Bowie County for the capital murder of Reagan Hancock and the kidnapping her unborn baby, Braxlynn Sage. The baby did not survive. The last woman to be handed a death sentence in the state was Kimberly Cargill in June 2012 for the slaying of her developmentally disabled babysitter in Smith County, who was set to testify against her in a custody battle. None of the women currently on death row in Texas are scheduled for execution. According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, 6 women have been executed in Texas since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, more than any other state, according to Death Penalty Information Center. The last woman to be executed in the U.S. was Lisa Montgomery in January 2021. It was the first execution of a female inmate carried out by the federal government since 1953, and her case is chillingly reminiscent of Parker’s. She wa...

Altoona native sentenced to death in 1996 murder of own children An attorney representing Darlie Routier, a former Altoona woman facing the death penalty in Texas for the murder of her two young children 25 years ago, said he is buoyed by an order issued last week in Dallas County ordering additional DNA testing of the massive amount of evidence collected in the case. Routier has maintained her innocence since the June 6, 1996, stabbing deaths of her children, Damon, 5, and Devon, 6, who were found dead in the family’s Rowlett, Texas, home during the early morning hours. Police almost immediately focused on Routier, who was sleeping in a downstairs television room with the children. Her husband, Darin, according to court documents, was asleep with the couple’s newborn in an upstairs bedroom. Routier said an intruder entered the home and stabbed her and the children. Routier suffered a near-fatal stab wound to her neck, which just missed the carotid artery. Despite her claim of innocenc...

Supporters of Darlie Routier — the former Altoona woman on death row in Texas after being convicted of the 1996 murder of 1 of her young sons — for years encouraged the state of Texas to run the images of an unidentified bloody fingerprint found at the murder scene. Dallas County Judge Gracie Lewis last summer issued an order imploring the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to utilize the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System in an effort to find the person who left the print on a coffee table in a downstairs television room where the bodies of Damon, 5, and his brother Devon, 6, were found during the early morning of June 6, 1996, after a frantic call for help by their mother. In a joint status report filed last week with the U.S. Court of Appeals in West Texas, the defense team and the state of Texas said the images of the prints were run, but no match was obtained. According to one of Routier’s attorneys, J. Stephen Cooper of Dallas, the story of the uni...

A judge in Dallas County, Texas, has issued an order giving defense attorneys representing Darlie Routier, a former Altoona woman on death row for the 1996 murder of one of her young sons, access to the district attorney’s files in the case. Routier’s mother, Darlie Kee, who was raised in Altoona and still has many relatives in the area, sees this as another positive sign that her daughter is close to receiving a long-awaited hearing that could result in her either receiving a new trial or exoneration. Darlie Routier’s case has been the subject of many reviews on television, including a recent airing of ABC’s “The Last Defense,” which explored several cases in which the alleged perpetrators continue to maintain their innocence despite serving many years in prison. Routier was arrested in June 1996 for the stabbing deaths of her 2 older children, Devon, 6, and Damon, 5, that occurred in the upscale home she shared with her husband, Darin, in Rowlett, Texas. While Rout...

Darlie Routier, 48, has been on death row in Texas for more than 20 years following her conviction for the murder of her 5-year-old son, Damon. Her six-year-old son, Devon, was also stabbed to death on June 6, 1996, but Routier was never tried for his murder. Routier had told police an intruder broke into the home, killed her sons and then slashed her neck before fleeing. Prosecutors contended that Routier was angry over money problems and the burdens of motherhood. Routier's attorney says DNA evidence in the case, including blood specks, is undergoing testing in a state crime lab. More than two decades after a mother-of-three from Texas was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering her five-year-old son, she believes she may finally be able to prove her innocence through a new round of DNA testing. Darlie Lynn Routier was 27 years old in 1997 when a jury found her guilty of stabbing to death her middle son, Damon, on June 6, 1996, inside the family's the home i...

Texas woman Darlie Routier has sat on death row for two decades now, ever since her 1997 conviction for the murder of one of her two slain children. Some think the case is open-and-shut, but others believe Routier has been framed for the grisly deaths of sons Devon, 6, and Damon, 5. Now, a new TV show called The Last Defense , executive produced by Viola Davis, will reinvestigate the events of June 6, 1996, in Rowlett, TX. At 2 a.m. local time that night, Routier called 911, yelling, "They just stabbed me and my children." When first responders showed up to her house, they found the then-26-year-old wife and mother holding a towel to a stab wound on her neck. They also found Devon dead and Damon dying, both boys having sustained deep stab wounds to the chest. Routier told the cops she had woken up to find a man on top of her, but soon they grew suspicious. "There were these inconsistencies with her story and physical evidence," Lt. David Nabors, head of ...