Texas executed Garcia White on Tuesday for multiple murders he committed between 1989 and 1995.
White, 61, was administered a lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville on Tuesday. He died at 6:56 p.m., making him the fifth person to be executed in Texas this year, The Texas Tribune reports. White was convicted in 1996 of murdering twin sisters Annette and Bernette Edwards, who were 16 years old. Their mother, Bonita, was killed in the same incident, but he was not tried for that crime. A jury sentenced White to death after learning that he had also killed Greta Williams in 1989 and Hai Pham, a convenience store clerk, in 1995. White sat on death row for three decades, filing multiple unsuccessful appeals in state and federal court. His latest appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was denied on Sunday, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied his petition to stay his execution Tuesday evening.
White initially denied involvement in the Edwards family murders but later told police he and a man named Terrence Moore had gone to the house to use drugs and have sex with Bonita. He claimed a fight broke out, and Moore stabbed Bonita and her two daughters. However, investigators found Moore had been killed months before the crime, and White eventually confessed to killing all three women. During sentencing, prosecutors presented evidence that White also admitted to killing Williams and Pham. Pham was beaten to death in 1995, and Williams was found murdered in 1989. White attempted to avoid execution using Texas’s 2013 junk science law, a groundbreaking provision that allows people to obtain new trials when the science used to convict them has since changed or been discredited. He claimed a cocaine-induced psychotic break during the murders. He also argued new DNA evidence pointed to another suspect and that he was intellectually disabled. However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected these arguments, and White’s execution proceeded.
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