TDCJ
Alexander Martin: Evidence showed he slit the throat of Helen Oliveros, had sex with her after she was dead and took about $150 from her. Posted on 06/07/2005 3:56:35 PM PDT by Dog Gone
TDCJ Alexander Martin: Evidence showed he slit the throat of Helen Oliveros, had sex with her after she was dead and took about $150 from her. |
"You wonder what's past this," Martinez said recently from a small visiting cage at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice near Livingston. "I'm going to find out."
Martinez, who would turn 29 next week, ordered all appeals stopped and is volunteering for lethal injection scheduled for Tuesday evening in Huntsville.
"I feel I should have a choice, and I'm making my choice," he said.
His execution, for the slaying of a prostitute in Houston less than four years ago, would be the ninth of the year in Texas, the nation's most active death penalty state.
"Every communication I've had with him in the last month has indicated he intends to go forward," Pat McCann, Martinez's lawyer, said Monday. "He was evaluated in a series of hearings by two psychiatrists. He was found to be competent. I have no reason to believe that has changed.
"It's very frustrating to me."
Martinez hoped to die back in March, but the execution date was canceled after McCann filed an appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
"He was furious," McCann said.
"Really just a waste of my time," Martinez said. "There are guys here who deserve a second chance, a third chance. I accept what's happening."
Martinez, an eighth-grade dropout who said he never had a job, was out of prison only three weeks in August 2001 on an attempted murder conviction when he telephoned an escort service that was a front for prostitutes.
They discussed payment and he said he agreed to $300. Helen Oliveros, 45, showed up at the Houston house where he was staying.
"I didn't have $300," he said. "She got real mad and we got into a fight. I stabbed her."
Evidence showed he slit the woman's throat with a knife, had sex with her after she was dead and took about $150 from her. Then he folded her body into a trash bag and stuffed it in a closet.
He took the body to a nearby vacant field and dumped it. His brother later would testify about how he helped Martinez replace the carpet in the room where the slaying occurred because it was stained and smelled bad.
Marie Munier, a Harris County assistant district attorney who helped prosecute Martinez, said he later slit the throat of his stepmother, who would survive her wounds, then went to another relative's house where he reported he had "done something bad," she said. Those relatives were afraid and called police, and he was linked to the Oliveros slaying.
"He gives pretty much a full confession," Munier said.
Martinez said he had been in and out of jail and prison since he was 15 when he first was arrested for stealing cars. In August 1994 he was convicted of attempted murder in Houston for stabbing a worker at a pizza place and was sentenced to seven years. A year later he was paroled, then returned to prison the following year for violating parole.
On July 20, 2001, he was freed under mandatory supervision. Oliveros, whose name is on a tattoo of a tombstone on Martinez's arm, was killed 23 days later.
At least six other Texas inmates have execution dates, including another this month. Charles Dean Hood is set to die June 30 for the fatal shootings of a man and woman in the Dallas suburb of Plano in 1989.
My clock says it is done. What a waste of life. I mean, what a totally wasted life not that he shouldn't be killed.
My clock says it is done. What a waste of life. I mean, what a totally wasted life not that he shouldn't be killed.
Sorry for the double post. FR seems to be running slow.
Sad. He thinks it's going to get better now that he's dead?
If you do the crime do the punishment be it live or death.
Notice he's not "volunteering" to have his throat slit.
as to what he's about to 'find' i'd guess he's about to jump from the frying pan into the fire. .
Bye, bye.
Actually the whole process takes about 15 minutes. Final statements and all that stuff, and then the staff takes a few minutes to examine him and declare him really truly dead.
Reading his history, he was bound to take the track that he did. It's sad that somebody or something didn't intervene to turn things around. Yes, he deserved death. As to where he is now, only he and God know.
At least the guy was willing to take the punishment instead of appealing and crying "I'm innocent" for twenty years.
In the immortal words of Curley Bill in "Tombstone": 'Well..., bye...."
Well, that's between him and his maker now.
why dont they just slowly starve inmates.. it would save tax money and be a detterent. let them fight over food and then there will be even less. its only logical . not like they will be good citizens. after all..... after they spend so much time hanging out with each other they will never change.
I agree. It is sad in the sense that he is a total waste -- he had an ugly, senseless life that has now come to its deserved end. That is different from the usual liberal lament that "it's society's fault" and "let's give him a few months of self-esteem counselling and release him."
and so do the rest of us.
Alexander Martinez, 28, who was the ninth Texas killer to be executed this year, made only a brief final statement, assuring his family and friends of his love. His voice trembled and at times was barely audible.
As he looked toward the one-way mirror that concealed the witness chamber from his view, Martinez repeatedly smiled and silently mouthed unintelligible words.
Witnessing the execution were his wife, Alisa Martinez, a British citizen who married him by proxy while he was in prison, and Laura Martinez, his sister-in-law. They wept softly as the lethal drugs began to flow at 6:10 p.m. Martinez was declared dead eight minutes later.
No members of the victim's family asked to watch Martinez die.
Two hours before the execution, Martinez, an eighth-grade dropout, gave a hand-written statement to prison officials. In it, he acknowledged: "I have caused much pain to so many people."
"I especially want to apologize to my victim's family for the life I took," he wrote in a flowing cursive script.
"I am only taking full responsibility for what I have done. I am truly sorry and though some may not believe this. God only knows the truth and for that I know that's all that matters. I am ashamed for what I've done!"
"Really just a waste of my time," Martinez said. "There are guys here who deserve a second chance, a third chance. I accept what's happening."
Cripes. Even a 'Dead Man Walking' thinks Death Row Inmates deserve SECOND and THIRD chances?!? One less Democrat in this world today; though I'm sure he'll still VOTE in upcoming elections. ;)
He made no excuses and took his punishment willingly, almost gratefull, it seems. I suspect there was a shred of humanity left in him after all the horror, and I hope he made his peace with God.
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