First Death Row Prisoner Under Donald Trump's Presidency Executed .
The first Death Row prisoner
under Donald Trump 's presidency has been executed despite last minute appeals
he did not pull the trigger.
Terry Edwards, 43 aka the Subway Murderer was killed by
lethal injection in Texas at 10:17pm, last night.
The inmate was executed for killing two sandwich shop
employees during a robbery in 2002 after the Supreme Court denied a stay
requests.
Terry's lawyers argued both that he was not the trigger man
and that his case was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct in arguments that
held up the execution by four hours.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason
Clark confirmed in a statement this morning that he died at the state's death
chamber in Huntsville.
The statement said that Terry's last words were: "Yes, I
made peace with God. I hope y'all make peace with this."
The execution was put on hold for about four hours as the
Supreme Court considered several motions citing what lawyers for Edwards said were
faults in previous legal proceedings.
The court rejected those requests late on Thursday evening.
The execution was the 540th in Texas since the Supreme Court
reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the most of any state.
Edwards was convicted along with co-defendant Kirk Edwards,
an older cousin, of the July 2002 murders of Dallas Subway sandwich shop
employees Mickell Goodwin and Tommy Walker in a robbery.
Kirk Edwards has a projected release date of July 2027, Texas
Department of Criminal Justice online records showed.
In an editorial posted online on Wednesday, the Dallas
Morning News said the execution should be halted because there are too many
unanswered questions in the case.
"These questions do not paint Terry Edwards as innocent.
But they do raise uncertainties as to whether the jury was
misled when it determined he had pulled the trigger and deserved to die",
it said.
Lawyers for Texas have argued that new counsel for Edwards
previously tried to halt the execution on similar grounds and that his
conviction and sentencing were legal and proper.
John Mills, an attorney for Edwards, said he has evidence
indicating that Edwards was not the gunman.
"Previous counsel has done virtually almost nothing to
ensure that his case was investigated and that the powerful evidence
undermining the reliability and the fairness of his conviction was brought to
light," Mills said in an interview.
One of the main pieces of evidence was gunshot residue
testing, which at trial was presented and used by prosecutors who said Terry
Edwards fired the fatal shots.
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