Huntsville, Texas (AP) – a Texas man convicted of a fatal and staggering young mother more than 20 years ago, was executed Wednesday night while the victim’s mother and other relatives watched.
The 41-year-old Moises Sandoval Mendoza received a deadly injection at the Huntsville State Penitional and was declared dead at 6:40 pm. He was sentenced to death for his conviction in killing 20-year-old Rachel O’Neal Tolleson.
After a spiritual advisor prayed over him for about two minutes, Mendosa has repeatedly apologized to the two parents of the victim and other relatives, calling everyone by name. “I’m sorry I robbed you of Rachel’s life,” he said, turning to her parents, one of her brothers, a cousin and an uncle looking through a window from a neighboring room.
Mendoza also said that he had robbed her mother’s daughter to her mother, adding, “I’m sorry for this. I don’t know anything I could ever say or do, he’ll ever compensate for it. I want you to know I’m honest. I apologize.” The daughter did not attend the execution.
He then spoke briefly in Spanish, turning to his wife, sister and two friends looking through a window from another witness room. “I love you, I’m with you, I’m fine in peace,” he said in Spanish, his words, made in a transcript in English translation. “You know I’m fine and it’s all love.”
When the injection began, he could hear himself doing two strong breaths and then began to snore. After about 10 snoring, the whole movement stopped and he was declared dead 19 minutes later.
Prosecutors claim that 41-year-old Mendosa took Tolson from his home in northern Texas, leaving her 6-month-old daughter alone. The baby was found cold and wet, but the next day by Tolleson’s mother. Toleson’s body was discovered six days later, left in a field near the creek.
The evidence in the Mendos case shows that he also burned toleson’s body to hide his fingerprints. Dental records were used to identify it, according to investigators.
Pam O’Neal, the victim’s mother, told reporters after witnessing Mendoz’s execution that she could not cancel the loss of her daughter. Reading from a statement, she told Mendoza: “He has been to death for 20 years.
While Mendos’s relatives and friends left prison, they looked distracted and hugged each other.
Hours earlier on Wednesday, the US Supreme Court dismissed a final request from Mendoza’s lawyers to suspend his execution. Mendoza’s lawyers told the jurors in filing that he had been prevented by the lower courts from claiming that he had been denied effective assistance to a lawyer early in the appeal process.
But the Prosecutor’s Office of Texas told the Supreme Court that Mendoz’s claim to be ineffective for a lawyer had previously been found “merciless and insignificant” by the null federal court.
The larger courts also rejected his petitions for a stay. The Texas Council for pardon and release on Monday refused Mendoza’s request to travel with his death sentence to less punishment.
Authorities said that in the days before the murder, Mendosa had visited a party at Tolleson’s home in Farmersville, located about 45 miles (72 kilometers) northeast of Dallas. On the day her body was found, Mendoza told a friend about the murder. The friend called the police and Mendos was arrested.
Mendoza admitted to the police, but could not give the detective the cause of the murder, authorities said. He told investigators that he had repeatedly suffocated toleson, sexually attacked her and dragged her body into a field where he suffocated her again and then stabbed her in the throat. Later, he moved her body to a more distant place and burned it, they said.
Mendosa was the third prisoner killed this year in Texas, the historically most busy state of the death penalty and the 13th in the United States
On Thursday, Alabama plans to execute James Osgood for rape and murder of a woman in 2010.
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