As reported in this local article, headlined "'Burn in hell for eternity': Houston serial killer Danny Bible executed in Huntsville," Texas completed another execution last night. Here are the details:
Shaking from Parkinson's tremors, voice quavering as he muttered "it hurts," Houston serial killer Danny Bible took his last gasping breaths on the gurney in Huntsville before closing one eye, snoring and falling forever silent. He offered no final statement Wednesday night, but protesters outside shouted angrily into a megaphone, defending the aging four-time killer.
Afterward, in a quiet conference room above the warden's office, the family of one of Bible's victims offered a final word. "Danny Paul Bible is as a vile and evil a person that has ever drawn breath," said Larry Lance, whose sister fell prey to Bible's wrath in 1983. "We are glad to have witnessed him draw his last breath. I know that he will burn in hell for eternity."
Despite concerns about the difficulty of finding a vein on the ailing murderer, the lethal injection team hooked up IV lines in under 15 minutes. After the lethal dose began at 6:17 p.m., Bible started breathing heavily before saying it "burned." He stopped moving three minutes later and was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m. He was the seventh killer to die in Huntsville this year.
Bible was sent to death row in 2003 after a crime spree zig-zagging across the country for the better part of 20 years. Though he murdered two other women and a baby, raped five young relatives and claimed an assortment of other violent crimes, it was his first killing -- back in 1979 -- that sent him to the death chamber....
In the weeks leading up to his scheduled execution, his defense team launched a flurry of legal claims, arguing that the aging prisoner might be too sick to execute by injection. Instead, they said, he should die by firing squad or nitrogen gas. In the end, the lethal injection team found viable veins in Bible's hands.
The so-called ice pick killer had a "galaxy of medical issues" that raised the possibility of a prolonged and painful lethal injection process his lawyers argued would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. "Texas will almost certainly join Alabama and Ohio and add itself to the unconscionable list of botched executions in America," his attorney Jeremy Schepers predicted beforehand....
Bible's attorneys on Wednesday took his case all the way up to the Supreme Court. Denying his challenge, they argued, could shut the door on any other similar claims from ailing prisoners who could suffer botched executions. But the high court denied his plea just after 5:30 p.m....
The Lone Star State has now executed seven men this year, including another Houston serial killer, Anthony Shore. There are seven other death dates on the calendar in Texas.
Notably, Texas only had seven executions through all of 2017, but it has hit that number through just the first part of 2018.
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