As reported in this local article, a "Dallas man who was already on parole for the murder of his estranged wife when he stabbed and strangled his ex-girlfriend in 1999 begged for forgiveness and thanked God with his final breaths before his Tuesday night execution." Here is more:
"I've asked God to forgive me. Please find it in your hearts to forgive me," William Earl Rayford said before he died by lethal injection at 8:48 p.m. The 64-year-old asked his victim's family for forgiveness and promised to keep them in his prayers, according to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman....
The execution, which took 13 minutes to carry out, was delayed more than two hours in light of a pair of pending Supreme Court appeals, including claims that racially biased testimony tainted his sentencing.
With another execution on the calendar for Thursday, this week could be the first time in five years the Lone Star State has seen back-to-back executions so close together. The next death date on the calendar is for John David Battaglia, who was convicted of killing his two daughters in 2001 while narrating the slayings to his estranged wife on the other end of the phone. The scheduled execution comes two weeks after Texas carried out the nation's first execution of 2018 with the lethal injection of Houston-area serial killer Anthony Shore.
Rayford was first sent to death row 17 years ago, following the gruesome slaying of Carol Hall. The crime eerily echoed a 1986 killing that netted him a 23-year prison sentence....
In the years since his arrival on death row, Rayford, who is black, has launched appeals centering on claims of bad lawyering, brain damage and a suicide attempt that his lawyers argued showed remorse and hinted that he may not be a future danger. This week, in a flurry of last-minute filings in the Supreme Court — including one late Tuesday — Rayford's lawyers argued that racially charged testimony during the punishment phase of trial "irreparably stained" the case.... But late Tuesday — after the execution had been delayed for more than two hours — the court rejected both of Rayford's bids for reprieve....
Last year, Texas led the nation in executions with seven condemned men put to death. The Lone Star State is the only state to execute a prisoner so far this year. Rayford's execution was the second nationwide this year.
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