Houston Chronicle
HUNTSVILLE — The state of Texas defied an international court and executed Jose Ernesto Medellin late Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of execution for the killer in the 1993 Houston gang rape-murders of two teenage girls.
Medellin, 33, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 9:57 p.m., nine minutes after receiving the fatal cocktail and nearly four hours after his scheduled 6 p.m. execution.
In his final statement, Medellin apologized for his crime: “I’m sorry that my actions brought you pain. I hope this brings the closure to what you seek,” he said. “Don’t ever hate them for what they do. Never harbor hate.”
He then looked toward the witness room in which his friend, Sandra Crisp, was watching, crying softly, and smiled. “I love you,” he said.
In the adjoining witness room, relatives of the two victims watched with little apparent emotion.
Medellin, a Mexican national who spent most of his life in the United States, was condemned for the June 1993 murders of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Peña, 16.
The girls were raped and strangled with a belt and shoelace after they stumbled into a drunken gang initiation rite while cutting through the park to get home before their curfew…
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