AP: Texas

10/27/2004

By MICHAEL GRACZYK  / Associated Press

Inmate Dominique Green was executed Tuesday evening despite last-minute legal battles and pleas from relatives of the murder victim that Green's life be spared.

"There was a lot of people that got me to this point and I can't thank them all," he said, speaking in a barely audible voice. "But thank you for your love and support. They have allowed me to do a lot more than I could have on my own. ... I have overcame a lot. I am not angry but I am disappointed that I was denied justice. But I am happy that I was afforded you all as family and friends," he said looking at five friends.

"I love you all. Please just keep the struggle going. ... I am just sorry and I am not as strong as I thought I was going to be. But I guess it only hurts for a little while. You are all my family. Please keep my memory alive."

Green gasped slightly a couple of times as the lethal drugs took effect and was pronounced dead nine minutes late, at 7:59 p.m.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas had blocked Green's execution for the slaying of a Houston man a dozen years ago after his attorneys argued that boxes of improperly stored and catalogued evidence kept by the Houston Police Department crime lab and recently discovered could contain information relevant to the case.

But the stay was later lifted by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a stay.

Harris County prosecutors have said all evidence in the case had been accounted for in Green's case.

The execution was the 18th this year in Texas and the fifth this month.

It had been opposed by relatives of the man Green was convicted of killing and by religious leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu and the Rev. Joseph Fiorenza, the Roman Catholic bishop of Galveston-Houston.

Green, 30, was convicted of gunning down Andrew Lastrapes Jr. during a $50 robbery outside a Houston convenience store.

Despite requests from Lastrapes' widow and two sons, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles refused in a 6-0 vote to issue a 120-day reprieve. The panel also voted 5-1 against commuting Green's sentence to life in prison.

"That's sort of the reality for Texas," said David Atwood, director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "We always know this is an uphill battle for anybody on death row."

Green acknowledged being at the scene where Lastrapes was fatally shot in the early morning hours of Oct. 14, 1992, but he insisted he wasn't the gunman.

Two companions, who like Green were black, testified against him at his trial and received lesser sentences for robbery. A fourth person at the scene, a white man, never was indicted, spurring complaints of racial bias from Green's appeals lawyers and Lastrapes' family.

Harris County prosecutors said the case against the fourth person went to a grand jury, but the panel refused to indict.

In interviews from death row, Green said he grew up and matured since arriving there with the capital murder conviction and an extensive juvenile record for weapons, drugs and burglary offenses.

"I would like to be able to say the last 12 years haven't been for nothing," Green said last week, pointing to his clean record and his mentoring of other young condemned inmates. "Now is a time to show them strength. I can still be a positive influence. I'm going to always be an influence, to make people smile."

In a rare face-to-face session in a Texas prison between a death row inmate and a relative of a murder victim, Andre Lastrapes-Luckett met for 90 minutes Monday with the man convicted of killing his father.

"Texas is going to put a righteous person to die like an animal, putting him on a table, strapping him up, putting those needles in his arms, putting him to sleep," Lastrapes-Luckett said. "We're not dogs. We're human beings just like everybody else. He's a human being, just like me, just like you."

"That's just a very personal thing," Roe Wilson, an assistant district attorney in Harris County who handles capital murder appeals. "Legally, it doesn't mean anything."

Green was arrested three days after the fatal shooting. Officers spotted a stolen car and chased it for 50 miles before it ran off a highway. Green fled into some woods and was caught. According to testimony at his trial, a gun in the car was traced to the Lastrapes slaying.

Appeals attorneys said problems at the Houston police crime lab raised questions about the validity of that evidence.

At his trial, nine victims identified Green as the person who robbed them during a 3-day crime spree. His defense lawyers argued he had been abused by a mentally ill mother and turned to the streets to help provide support for two younger brothers.