Christopher Swift was executed by the State of Texas for the murders of his wife and mother in law
According to court documents Christopher Swift would strangle his pregnant wife Amy Amel Sabeh-Swift at their home before heading to his mother in law, Sandy Sabeh, home and strangling her. Swift would then abandon his two year old son before fleeing
Christopher Swift would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Christopher Swift would be executed by lethal injection on January 30 2007
Christopher Swift Photos
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When Was Christopher Swift Executed
Christopher Swift was executed on January 30 2007
Christopher Swift Case
Condemned killer Christopher Swift was executed Tuesday, spurning appeals that could stop or delay his execution for the slayings of his wife and mother-in-law in North Texas. Asked if he had a final statement, Swift responded: “no.” Seven minutes later at 6:20 p.m., he was pronounced dead as five friends watched. No relatives of survivors attended the execution.
The lethal injection of Swift, 31, was the third this year in Texas, the nation’s most active capital punishment state. “Receiving the death penalty is what he’s wanted from Day 1, from the first day I met him,” said Derek Adame, who was one of Swift’s trial lawyers. “He and I had several discussions about it. It was frustrating for me. That’s what makes it hard to deal with. It’s the ultimate punishment.”
Evidence showed Swift’s 5-year-old son watched as the former laborer and parolee stabbed and strangled his pregnant wife, Amy Sabeh-Swift, in the family recreational vehicle in Irving. Then he took the boy to a mobile home park in Lake Dallas and strangled his wife’s mother, Sandra Stevens Sabeh, 61, at her home. The boy was found the next day, April 30, 2003, wandering the lobby of a Days Inn in Irving where his father had rented a room. Swift left after the child fell asleep. Hotel staffers fed him breakfast and let him watch cartoons in the lobby but then called police after no one claimed him and he was getting frightened. When police arrived, the child told them his father had killed his mother and grandmother. Officers found their bodies. Swift was under arrest within hours.
Defense lawyers tried to show Swift should be found innocent by reason of insanity. Prosecutors presented witnesses who said Swift knew what he was doing and was not insane. “He never denied doing the killings,” said Lee Ann Breading, a former Denton County assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case. “The whole issue centered on his mental state and evidence basically turned on the legal definition of insanity. “He didn’t meet it. He knew what he was doing was wrong. He had talked a lot about how police ‘are going to put me in jail.”‘
Authorities determined after abandoning his son at the Days Inn, he got himself a room elsewhere and some beer. “He had some issues,” Breading said. “Leave your kid in a hotel and drink a 12-pack – issues juries don’t like.”
Swift’s 27-year-old wife worked as an aide at the Denton State School for the mentally disabled. The couple had been married six years although at one point Swift had filed for divorce, then didn’t follow through on the filing. She was eight months pregnant when she died. Their marriage began on a difficult note. Four days after their wedding, he started a four-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to assaulting a Texas state trooper in 1996 and a Denton County woman in 1997. He also pleaded guilty to an assault charge for shoving and choking his wife in March 1996, driving while intoxicated and fleeing a police officer. In 1992, he pleaded guilty to evading arrest.
Prosecutors said Swift had a history of alcohol abuse and drug use. He’d quit a new job at a concrete company because they asked him to take a drug test and when he came home, his decision sparked an argument with his wife that led to the slayings, prosecutors said.
Swift spent about 21 months on death row. The average condemned Texas inmate is in prison about 10 years before execution. The shortest time on death row was Joe Gonzales, who in 1996 received lethal injection 252 days after he arrived. Another Texas inmate is scheduled to die next week. James Jackson, 47, is among at least 11 Texas prisoners with execution dates. Jackson was condemned for the 1997 slayings of his two stepdaughters at their Houston home. Jackson’s wife, the mother of the girls, also was killed.