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.
gratefull = gratefully
Sounds like he is one of the few that actually acknowledges his crime. Most either ignore it entirely or claim innocence or that the victim had it coming.
But at least not too much of a waste of time on death row.
At least with the Lord there is always hope for the repentant. That's why the Catholic Church used to not oppose the DP, because the condemned might find mercy with God, as he would find none with man.
Actually, I hear it's a very peaceful and pleasant way to go.
I'm the opposite. I constantly confess to crimes I didn't commit.
And yes, it was I who starved millions to death in the Ukraine.
If everybody got to go to heaven, that means all the victims would have to spend eternity with their perps. Doesn't seem fair. Sounds like a liberals version of eternity. Not saying that's what you're advocating. In my belief system no one would make it that wasn't totally changed.
Too good for these guys. Life in solitary, no windows, food slot. When the food stops disappearing for a few days, you peek in. If he's dead, you haul his corpse out, hose the joint down, and throw another murdering scumbag in there.
I oppose the death penalty for that reason, it's too easy.
She should be in a mental institution, just like all the freakin weirdos who are allowed to communicate and even marry these swine.
You're placing an awful limitation on God and His realm. IMHO (and in discussions like this I try to be extra H), we all become one in God, and concepts such as "perp" and "victim" become meaningless in His light. However, we all have our different visions of Heaven, and my only claim on my particular vision is that it is the one that give me comfort with my particular set of sins.
Pleased to meet you. But what's puzzling me is the... nature of your game.
hoo hoooooo!
I leave it in His hands.
Amen
Which means death penalty opponents are "anti-choice"?
It is better...for all of US.
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