Willie Trottie poses in July inside a visiting cage outside death row in Livingston, Tex. (Mike Graczyk/AP)
Texas carried out its eighth execution of the year Wednesday evening, tying it with with Missouri for the most of any state in 2014.
The state executed Willie Trottie, who turned 45 Monday, for fatally shooting an ex-girlfriend and her brother in 1993. He shot and killed Barbara Canada after she left him and moved back in with her family; Trottie also shot and killed Titus Canada, her brother, in front of “at least two children,” according to a description from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Attorneys for Trottie filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking for a writ of certiorari and a stay of execution, saying that “factual discrepancies in the evidence against Trottie remain unresolved.” Among other things, they cited discrepancies regarding who fired the first shot (Trottie or Titus). In response, the state of Texas filed a motion with the court arguing against these requests, saying that “Trottie’s arguments do not have any merit” and asking the Supreme Court not to grant the stay. (The filings from Trottie’s attorneys and from the state of Texas are at the bottom of this post.)
Shortly before 6 p.m., the Supreme Court denied both requests. Justice Antonin Scalia referred both requests to the full court, which denied them without explanation.
Trottie became the eighth person put to death in Texas this year and the 29th person nationwide. Almost all of these executions have occurred in just three states; Missouri, Texas and Florida had each executed seven inmates before Wednesday, more than three-quarters of all executions this year. This is a remarkable concentration when you consider that nationwide, the number of executions has dropped in recent years (along with support for capital punishment).
Missouri executed convicted murderer Earl Ringo Jr. early Wednesday morning using the same execution protocol that Texas uses: a dose of the drug pentobarbital. Ringo’s attorneys had unsuccessfully tried to stop the execution, citing a recent report by St. Louis Public Radio showing that the drug midazolam — which has been the common factor in three problematic executions this year — was also used in Missouri executions.
After an execution in Arizona took nearly two hours — an episode that followed a high-profile botched execution in Oklahoma — officials in Missouri and Texas said they would not alter their execution protocols. Texas has used a single dose of pentobarbital to carry out “33 executions without complication” since 2012, Robert C. Hurst, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said in a statement.
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Texas has been far and away the most active state. There have been 1,387 people executed in the United States before Trottie was killed (a number that includes Ringo). More than a third of the executions occurred in Texas, as the state has now put 516 inmates to death over that span.
The number of executions has dropped nationwide, and a third of the 18 states to abolish the death penalty have done so since 2007. Texas remains an outlier, carrying out far more executions than any other state. To put this another way: Texas has executed more inmates since 2007 (130) than any other state has since the death penalty was reinstated nearly four decades ago. (Oklahoma, the state with the second-highest number of executions, has put 111 inmates to death).
Trottie’s petition for a writ of certiorari:
Willie Trottie – Cert petition
Trottie’s request for a stay:
Response to both requests from the state of Texas:
Graphic: Execution in America [click to view]
This post has been updated to add the Supreme Court’s response.
