Moises Sandoval Mendoza is scheduled to be executed by deadly injection in Texas subsequent month — lastly, after 21 years.
In 2004, he was convicted and sentenced to demise for murdering a 20-year-old mom by the title of Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson. Usually, I don’t assist the demise penalty. However Mendoza has executed some evil issues. In line with authorities, he met Tolleson at a celebration. After she confirmed no romantic curiosity in him, Mendoza advised police that he kidnapped, sexually assaulted, stabbed and burned Tolleson earlier than burying her disfigured physique underneath a pile of brush. Police discovered Tolleson’s 5-month-old daughter alone after household reported the lady lacking. Along with his confession, Mendoza’s DNA and witness testimony linked him to the crime.
I nonetheless don’t assist the demise penalty. However particulars like those involving Mendoza problem my place. The identical is true for the case of Matthew Johnson, who is about to be executed in Texas on Might 20.
On that very same date in 2012, Johnson robbed a comfort retailer by pouring lighter fluid over the pinnacle of the clerk, 76-year-old Nancy Harris, and setting her on fireplace. In line with court docket paperwork, the lady will be seen within the retailer’s digicam surveillance footage desperately making an attempt to douse the flames after Johnson leaves. When police discovered him, he was nonetheless in possession of the cigarettes, lighters and $76 he had stolen from the shop and the ring he compelled off of the sufferer’s hand. Greater than 40% of her physique was burned. Harris, a grandmother of 12 and great-grandmother of 5, died 5 days after the assault. Johnson’s execution received’t deliver Harris again to her grieving household, however it could change the that means of Might 20 for them. Maybe on this, there’s a measure of closure.
That received’t be the case for members of the family of the victims killed in a Walmart close to the southern border in 2019.
Patrick Crusius, 21, and a resident of an prosperous Dallas suburb, drove greater than 600 miles throughout Texas to El Paso on Aug. 3 — to focus on Latinos, in response to police. When he arrived, Crusius posted a manifesto expressing white supremacist ideology and admiration of racially motivated mass shooters. Then he began taking pictures. With an AK-47-type rifle, he dedicated one of many deadliest mass shootings on this nation’s historical past, killing 23 folks — amongst them younger mother and father like Tolleson and grandparents like Harris. Along with the deaths, Crusius was accountable for injuring 22 others.
Nonetheless, this week, greater than 5 years after Crusius confessed to authorities that he was accountable for the bloodshed, El Paso County District Lawyer James Montoya introduced his workplace would not seek the death penalty, simply as federal prosecutors selected to not pursue execution. Within the federal case, Crusius pleaded guilty to hate crimes in 2023 and was sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences.
While you juxtapose the demise totals among the many three circumstances, the El Paso prosecutor’s choice makes little sense. Why execute killers of two people however not the killer of 23? While you juxtapose the demographics of the three Texas circumstances, the choice displays a disturbing sample. Mendoza, killer of the 20-year-old mom, is Latino. Johnson, killer of the 76-year-old cashier, is Black. These males are the final two folks set to be executed this 12 months within the Lone Star State, and so they each killed white girls.
Two professors within the College of Denver’s Division of Sociology and Criminology studied 40 years of Texas demise sentences (1976-2016) and located defendants accused of killing white girls are three times more likely to be put to death. Many of the victims on the Walmart had been Latino. Crusius is white. So regardless of being convicted within the state that has executed the most people within the nation because the reinstatement of the demise penalty — he will get to dwell.
I’ll say it once more: Usually I’m not a supporter of the demise penalty. The main points of Crusius’ crimes problem my place. What’s it about his case that warranted additional leniency? The 2 males Texas plans to kill don’t have almost as a lot blood on their fingers.
