This week in 2002

“. . . I’m fixing to die, but not for my mistakes. My trial lawyers, they are the ones who are killing me. . . . I want to thank you [to the victim’s mother]. It meant a lot to me. Tell my mother I love her too. I didn’t call her because I just couldn’t. I am fine. I am happy. See you on the other side.”

— Johnny Joe Martinez, convicted of murder and robbery, lethal injection, Texas.
Executed May 22, 2002

When Martinez was twenty, he stabbed a Corpus Christi convenience-store clerk to death over the $25.65 in the store’s cash register. After Martinez’s sentencing, the mother of the victim appealed to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, pleading with them to give him a life sentence. “Please do not cause another mother to lose her son to murder,” she wrote. In spite of her efforts, Martinez was executed.