Death Penalty News

Bernardo Tercero HUNTSVILLE (August 25, 2015) The Texas Count of Criminal Appeals Tuesday stopped the scheduled execution of a Nicaraguan man convicted of killing a Houston high school teacher during a robbery more than 18 years ago. Bernardo Tercero, 39, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection Wednesday evening in Huntsville. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a reprieve Tuesday after attorneys contended in an appeal that a prosecution witness at Tercero's trial in 2000 gave false testimony. The appeals court has returned the case to the trial court to review the claim. Tercero was convicted in the shooting death of Robert Berger, 38, who was in a Houston dry cleaners shop in March 1997 when Tercero came in to rob it. Prosecutors said Tercero was in the U.S. illegally at the time of the slaying. Source: Associated Press, August 25, 2015 Report an error, an omission: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com

Junto al nicaragüense Bernardo Tercero, cuya ejecución está programada para el miércoles de esta semana, hay otros 21 extranjeros en el corredor de la muerte en Texas, en su mayoría mexicanos y centroamericanos, aunque también los hay de Sudamérica, Asia y el Caribe. Si nada lo impide, al nicaragüense lo ejecutarán el miércoles a las seis de la tarde locales en la cárcel de Huntsville, la más antigua de Texas y en la que ya han sido ajusticiados 13 extranjeros desde marzo de 1993, cuando el dominicano Carlos Santana murió a manos de sus verdugos. Tercero fue condenado por asesinar a otro hombre en 1997 durante un atraco en una lavandería de Houston, crimen por el que ha pasado los últimos 15 años de su vida en el temido corredor de la muerte de Texas, ubicado en la cárcel de Polunsky. Once mexicanos y tres salvadoreños, entre otros Además de Tercero, en Texas están condenados a muerte 11 mexicanos, tres salvadoreños, dos hondureños, un argentino, un dominicano, un vi...

Bernardo Aban Tercero Tercero's execution would be 12th in Texas this year On March 31, 1997, Robert Berger and his 3-year-old daughter walked into the Park Avenue Cleaners in Houston at the same exact time Bernardo Aban Tercero and an accomplice were trying to pull off a robbery. His interruption irked Tercero, and the 2 started scuffling. When Berger tried to separate himself, Tercero shot him in the head. Tercero returned to his native Nicaragua after the robbery, but on Nov. 20, 1997, he was indicted for capital murder. He was found thanks to the help of a female acquaintance in July 1999 in Mexico, attempting a return to the United States. Tercero's attempts to take control of his own fate suffered mightily immediately thereafter. Apprehended, his requests to speak with the Nicaraguan Consulate-General (a right under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations) was denied, and he was returned to Harris County, where a trial began in October of 2000. There, he ...

DALLAS, Texas (CBSDFW.COM/AP) - Two Supreme Court appeals and one Federal appeal from Texas death row inmates were all recently denied – moving the condemned one step closer to execution. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has refused arguments from attorneys for 54-year-old Randall Wayne Mays that the former welder and oilfield worker had deficient legal help at his 2008 trial. The court late Friday also turned down contentions that sentencing Mays to death was unconstitutionally cruel because he’s mentally ill. Mays was convicted of the slaying of sheriff’s deputy Tony Ogburn. A second officer, Paul Habelt, also was killed. A third deputy was wounded. The shootings occurred after Mays barricaded himself in his house in Payne Springs, about 55 miles southeast of Dallas. On Monday, The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review an appeal from a 33-year-old Bexar County man sent to death row for the slaying of a San Antonio police officer in 2001. The ruling upho...