[December 04, 2013]AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) — Texas executed by
lethal injection on Tuesday a man convicted of slamming a pickup truck
into a mounted correctional officer in a prison escape attempt in 2007,
knocking her off the horse and killing her.
Jerry Martin, 43, was pronounced dead at 6:27 p.m. U.S. Central
Time (0027 GMT on Wednesday) at a state prison in Huntsville, Texas,
according to a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice.
Before he was put to death, Martin told the victim's family he was
sorry and that he took full responsibility for her death, according
to a statement released by the prison.
"To my family, we've talked earlier and you know I'm at peace. God
is the ultimate judge, he knows what happened," he said before his
execution, according to the prison statement.
Martin, who requested that there be no appeals of the execution, was
serving a 50-year sentence for attempted murder and assault when he
and a fellow inmate tried to escape from a prison detail doing farm
work.
Martin took an officer's weapon, ran to a parking lot and stole a
Huntsville city truck. He was convicted of using the vehicle to kill
Susan Canfield, 59, a correctional officer and a grandmother, the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.
Martin became the 16th person executed by Texas in 2013, the most of
any state this year, and the 36th person executed in the United
States this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Texas has executed 508 prisoners since the reinstatement of capital
punishment by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, also the most of any
U.S. state.
[By Jon Herskovitz]
(Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee;
editing by
Alex Dobuzinskis and Paul Simao)
