A year ago, his death penalty case
was being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. On Wednesday evening, he was put to death by the state of Texas.
Erick Davila, 31, was executed after a relatively short nine years on Texas’ death row. He was convicted in 2009 for repeatedly shooting at a Fort Worth house during a child’s birthday party, killing the mother and 5-year-old daughter of Jerry Stevenson, who Davila claims was a rival gang member. In his last appeal, Davila asked the high court to stop his execution based on new claims of drug use during the murders and a conflict of interest with the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office.
Minutes before his scheduled 6 p.m. death, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal. He was strapped to a gurney in a mint green room, where he spoke his final words as Stevenson and other family members of the victims watched through a glass pane.
“Yes, I would like to say nephew, it burns, huh," he said. "You know, I might have lost the fight, but I’m still a soldier. I still love you all. To my supporters and family, y’all hold it down. Ten Toes down right. That’s all.”
He was then injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital and was pronounced dead at 6:31 p.m.
Davila fought his sentence to the end, maintaining to the courts that he only intended to kill his rival, Jerry Stevenson, not the man’s daughter, Queshawn, or her grandmother, 47-year-old Annette. It was an important distinction because the jury had to find that Davila intended to kill multiple people to be eligible for the death penalty. Prosecutors argued Davila always intended to kill more than his rival, pointing to his statement to police that he was trying to get “the guys on the porch” and “the fat dude.”
“I wasn't aiming at the kids or the woman and don't know where the woman came from,” Davila said in a written statement to police, according to court documents. “I don't know the fat dudes name, but I know what he looks like, so I recognized his face.”
It was the question of intent that eventually led Davila’s case to the nation’s high court last April on a legal technicality. His current lawyer, Seth Kretzer, argued that when jurors at his trial questioned if they needed to decide whether Davila intended to kill his two victims or if he intended to kill someone and in the process fatally shot two others, the judge — who is now the Tarrant County criminal district attorney — erred in her answer.
The judge responded that Davila would be responsible for a crime if the only difference between what happened and what he wanted was that a different person was hurt — without affirming to them that Davila must have intended to kill more than one person. The jury found him guilty.
Though his lawyer at trial objected to the judge’s instructions, the objection was overruled, and the issue wasn’t brought up again in Davila’s state appeals, which Kretzer said was bad lawyering. The question that landed in front of the U.S. Supreme Court was whether Kretzer could raise the jury instruction in federal courts because of ineffective appellate lawyers.
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