A Texas man is set to be executed for fatally stabbing twin teenage girls in 1989

[October 01, 2024]  By JUAN A. LOZANO

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas man linked to five killings and convicted of fatally stabbing twin 16-year-old girls more than three decades ago is facing execution on Tuesday evening.

Garcia White was condemned for the December 1989 killings of Annette and Bernette Edwards. The bodies of the twin girls and their mother, Bonita Edwards, were found in their Houston apartment.

White, 61, a former college football player who later worked as a fry cook, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection Tuesday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. White would be the sixth inmate put to death in the U.S. in the last 11 days.

Testimony showed White went to the girls' Houston home to smoke crack with their mother, Bonita, who also was fatally stabbed. When the girls came out of their room to see what had happened, White attacked them. Evidence showed White broke down the locked door of the girls’ bedroom. He was later tied to the deaths of a grocery store owner and another woman.

“Garcia White committed five murders in three different transactions and two of his victims were teenage girls. This is the type of case that the death penalty was intended for,” said Josh Reiss, chief of the Post-Conviction Writs Division with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Houston.

White’s lawyers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution after lower courts previously rejected his petitions for a stay. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Friday denied White’s request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant him a 30-day reprieve.

His lawyers argued that Texas’ top criminal appeals court has refused “to accept medical evidence and strong factual backing” showing White is intellectually disabled.

The Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of intellectually disabled people. But it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities. Justices have wrestled with how much discretion to allow.

White’s lawyers also accused the Texas appeals court of not allowing his defense team to present evidence that could spare him a death sentence, including DNA evidence that another man also was at the crime scene and scientific evidence that would show White was “likely suffering from a cocaine induced psychotic break during his actions.”

In this photo released by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Texas death row inmate Garcia White. White, who is linked to five killings and convicted of fatally stabbing twin 16-year-old girls more than three decades ago is facing execution. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP)

White’s lawyers also argued he is entitled to a new review of his death sentence, alleging the Texas appeals court has created a new scheme for sentencing in capital punishment cases after a recent Supreme Court ruling in another Texas death row case.

“Mr. White’s case illustrates everything wrong with the current death penalty in Texas -– he has evidence that he is intellectually disabled which the (Texas appeals court) refuses to permit him to develop. He has significant evidence that could result in a sentence other than death at punishment but cannot present it or develop it,” White’s attorneys said in their petition to the high court.

In a filing to the Supreme Court, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said White has not presented evidence to support his claim he is intellectually disabled. The filing also said White's claims of evidence of another person at the crime scene and that cocaine use affected his actions have previously been rejected by the courts.

“White presents no reason to delay his execution date any longer. The Edwards family — and the victims of White’s other murders … deserve justice for his decades-old crimes,” the attorney general’s office said.

The deaths of the twin girls and their mother went unsolved for about six years until White confessed to the killings after he was arrested in connection with the July 1995 death of grocery store owner Hai Van Pham, who was fatally beaten during a robbery at his business. Police said White also confessed to fatally beating another woman, Greta Williams, in 1989.

White would be the fifth inmate put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, and the 19th in the U.S.

All contents © copyright 2024 Associated Press. All rights reserved