Douglas Roberts was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Jerry Velez
According to court documents Douglas Roberts would carjack Jerry Velez who would be robbed and stabbed to death
Douglas Roberts would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Douglas Roberts would be executed by lethal injection on April 20 2005
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When Was Douglas Roberts Executed
Douglas Roberts was executed on April 20 2005
Douglas Roberts Case
A convicted murderer who said he first tried cocaine at age 10 was executed Wednesday evening for abducting and fatally stabbing a San Antonio man whose car he stole nine years ago while he was high.
Douglas Roberts, 42, was upbeat and animated in the seconds before the lethal drugs were administered. “I’ve been hanging around this popsicle stand way too long,” he said when asked if he had a final statement. “I want to tell you all. “When I die, bury me deep, lay two speakers at my feet, put some headphones on my head and rock ‘n’ roll me when I’m dead.” “I’ll see you in heaven some day,” he added.
Roberts, 42, was smiling and mouthing “I love you all” to friends watching through a window nearby when the drugs began to take effect. He gasped and sputtered. He was pronounced dead eight minutes later, at 6:21 p.m. He was the fifth Texas prisoner put to death this year.
Roberts’ appeals were rejected earlier this month by the U.S. Supreme Court, and he asked his lawyers not to file last-minute actions to keep him alive. “Why go through the trouble for nothing?” he told The Associated Press last week. “The appeals have run their course through the system.” He insisted he had no desire to die but saw his execution as a way to end the loneliness and isolation of death row, which he described as “23 hours a day in a cement box.” “So if you’ve got to spend the rest of your life like this, and if you’re like me and know the Lord, then today’s a good day to go,” he said.
Roberts was convicted of killing Jerry Velez, 40, who was abducted in San Antonio in the early morning of May 18, 1996. Roberts, who worked as a machinist and lived in the Austin suburb of Round Rock, had just robbed a San Antonio convenience store and stole a customer’s car at knifepoint. Lost in an unfamiliar place and “stoned out of my mind,” Roberts said he spotted Velez walking to a row of cars parked outside an apartment complex. “I’m thinking: This guy is going to take me out of the city,” said Roberts, who was armed with a Bowie knife. “So I kidnapped him and his vehicle.” The pair drove to a dirt road in a remote area of Kendall County, about 30 miles northwest of San Antonio, where Roberts said he and Velez scuffled. “I guess he decided at the last minute he didn’t want to be stranded or thought he could overpower me,” Roberts said.
An autopsy later showed Velez was stabbed five times, had ribs broken, a lung punctured and head injuries. Evidence at Roberts’ trial showed the victim had been run over with a car as many as three times.
Roberts drove back toward Austin where he called police from a pay phone and told a dispatcher about the slaying, then waited for authorities to pick him up. “I knew drugs got to the point where they were controlling you and you were not controlling them,” he said. “This was someone I’d gotten off the street. Who was it going to be the next time? A little woman? A little kid? “I killed the guy that they said I killed,” Roberts said. “There’s no question about that.”
Instead of the manslaughter or reduced murder charge he expected, he was indicted for capital murder. At his trial, he told his attorney to call no defense witnesses and pick a jury that favored the death penalty. His jury deliberated two hours before convicting him and the following day decided he should be put to death.
In appeals that were rejected earlier by the courts, lawyers said Roberts had a difficult childhood and suffered from depression and possible brain damage. Roberts said his father was an alcoholic.
Roberts was to have shared the death chamber Wednesday with another condemned prisoner, Milton Mathis, for a rare back-to-back execution. Mathis, however, won a reprieve Tuesday from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. At least four Texas inmates have execution dates in May, beginning with Lonnie Pursley, set to die May 3 for the 1997 robbery and beating death of a man in Polk County in East Texas.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3144724
