News must be slow tonight.... He should have felt the needle sting about 4 hours ago and still nothing on the wire or tv stations that I find.....
Posted on 05/02/2005 5:34:05 PM PDT by Dog Gone
HUNTSVILLE — Lonnie Wayne Pursley kept going to prison for longer and longer terms but also kept getting paroled thanks to a shortage of prison space in Texas in the 1990s.
A jury in Polk County ensured he wouldn't get out again when they convicted him in 1999 of capital murder and sentenced him to death for the fatal beating and robbery of a 47-year-old East Texas man.
Pursley, 43, was scheduled to receive lethal injection Tuesday evening. He would be the sixth Texas prisoner executed this year.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month refused to review his case. Attorneys trying to halt Pursley's punishment were back in the courts, challenging the trial testimony of a medical examiner.
Pursley, a Houston native who grew up in Coldspring in San Jacinto County, was on parole for a third time when he was arrested, tried and condemned for the death of Robert Earl Cook, of Livingston.
Court documents indicated Cook was driving on U.S. Highway 59 near Shepherd, in San Jacinto County, where Pursley had gotten into an argument with his wife while attending a gathering at his mother-in-law's house. Prosecutors speculated Pursley was walking along the highway and Cook, who was known to pick up hitchhikers, offered Pursley a ride.
Somehow both wound up at Cook's trailer home March 28, 1997, and at some point the pair drove into the woods in the northeast part of Polk County where Cook was beaten to death and robbed of his rings. Witnesses told authorities they saw Pursley driving Cook's car later and that he traded the rings for drugs.
Pursley, who declined to speak with reporters on death row, said on a prison pen pal Web site that the case and testimony against him were false.
"Most of the evidence used against me was fabricated, botched, tainted, and yes, even planted!" he wrote.
"There was not anything planted," Polk County Sheriff Kenneth Hammack, who was a Texas Ranger at the time and investigated the slaying, said last week.
Pursley turned himself in after a warrant had been issued for his arrest.
Stephen Taylor, one of Pursley's trial lawyers, said his client was less than cooperative in helping develop a defense.
"He wouldn't tell us anything," Taylor said. "He never told us how they got together, what happened, anything. We don't know what happened to trigger the incident, how they happened to get to the victim's residence, if he was at the victim's residence and how he came into possession of the victim's car.
"We did the very best we could do. It was very difficult."
About a week after Cook's mother filed a missing person report, a passer-by found his decomposing body in a wooded area at the end of a dead-end dirt road about 2 1/2 miles from his home.
Nine days later, Cook's car was found abandoned in a wooded area in neighboring San Jacinto County, where Pursley was well known to authorities.
"Lonnie's just one of those souls that got involved in drugs and totally devastated his life and went downhill," San Jacinto County Sheriff Lacy Rogers said.
DNA evidence found 18 months later on a cigarette butt in the ashtray of Cook's car was used to link Pursley to the vehicle, according to court documents.
In 1987, Pursley received five years in prison for burglary and was paroled three years later. Within six months he wound up back behind bars with a 10-year term for theft but was paroled after 14 months. The following year, he picked up a 20-year term for burglary but was out in 3 1/2 years. Sixteen months later, Cook was killed.
Because of bed shortages and court-imposed population limits, Texas corrections officials in the late 1980s and into the 1990s were forced to release convicts early until new prisons were built that eased the problem.
"It's not our decision who stays in or who gets out," Rogers said. "It happens a lot. During most of those times, it was overcrowding there."
At least three other Texas inmates have execution dates for later this month.
I saw this button on a woman I know:
"How can pro-lifers be for the death penalty?"
But not 'all' of it?
Please tell me that you killed her.
how can someone who believes it's okay to take the life of an innocent baby think it's outrageous and inhumane to end the life of a convicted killer?
Should never have been paroled. Should have been executed years ago.
He committed the murder in 1997. Convicted in 1999 in the trial court.
In legal circles, this guy has been on a rocket to the death chamber.
Texas has only executed 6 people this year?
That doesn't seem like very many!
Just guessing, but I'd be surprised if Texas wasn't still leading all states even with the slow start.
Guess there was enough left over.
Lonnie Wayne Pursley?
With a name like that, he was doomed from the start. It seems sometimes like all convicted killers are called things like "Lonnie Wayne Pursley."
If you're middle name is Wayne, you're gonna die on death row. Statistical certainty.
That "you're" was a computer glitch at the Fresno office of FR. I swear.
They didn't miss Gary Gilmore.
News must be slow tonight.... He should have felt the needle sting about 4 hours ago and still nothing on the wire or tv stations that I find.....
We don't use the firing squad any more.
I doubt they would miss even if we did.
His execution is scheduled for tonight.
My bad...... need to read the articles with more attention. sheesh.
How can pro-aborters be against the death penalty?
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