Lonnie Pursley was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Robert Cook
According to court documents Lonnie Pursley would be pickup while he was walking by Robert Cook. The two men would end up in a remote location where Pursley would beat the man to death before stealing his belongings
Lonnie Pursley was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Lonnie Pursley would be executed by lethal injection on May 3 2005
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When Was Lonnie Pursley Executed
Lonnie Pursley was executed on May 3 2005
Lonnie Pursley Case
An apologetic convicted killer Lonnie Wayne Pursley was executed Tuesday for the robbery and fatal beating of an East Texas man while he was on parole for a third time. In a final statement, Pursley thanked relatives of his victim for a statement delivered to him shortly before he was taken to the death chamber in which they offered their forgiveness. “I’m very grateful for your forgiveness,” he said. His victim’s sister, between sobs, replied, “We forgive you.” “I’ve got Jesus in my heart. I’m sorry for any pain I’ve caused,” he said. Pursley, 43, then turned toward his own witnesses and expressed love to them. “I’m going to miss you all. Give everybody my love. I’ll see you all on the other side,” he said.
Pursley thanked fellow death row inmates for their support, adding, “I’m saved and I’m going home. OK? Y’all stay strong.” He gasped and snored as the drugs took effect. Pursley was pronounced dead at 6:23 p.m. CDT, eight minutes after the drugs began flowing. His daughter, who was among the witnesses, became very emotional and was escorted from the chamber prematurely.
Pursley became the sixth Texas prisoner executed this year. Two more are scheduled to die later this month. The former cook and laborer was a ninth-grade dropout who authorities said used rings he took from the slaying victim, 47-year-old Robert Earl Cook, of Livingston, to buy drugs.
Cook’s nephew, Jamie Hollis, said in the family statement that while they forgave Pursley and “cannot gain joy from another human being losing his life,” it was more important that Pursley ask for forgiveness “from our Father in heaven that determines where we spend eternity.”
The execution was carried out moments after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request by Pursley’s attorneys to postpone the punishment. In their appeal, lawyers argued prosecutors improperly withheld from Pursley’s trial attorneys information that the physician who performed the autopsy on Cook had been dismissed while working at the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office for sloppy performance and mismanaging of autopies. According to the appeal, the information was favorable to the defense and “could have been used to impeach her credibility and competence.” The high court last month had refused to review Pursley’s case.
Court documents indicated that in 1997 Cook was driving on U.S. Highway 59 near Shepherd, in San Jacinto County, where Pursley got into an argument with his wife while attending a gathering at his mother-in-law’s house. Prosecutors speculated Pursley was walking along the highway and Cook, who was known to pick up hitchhikers, offered a ride. When Cook was missing after two days, his mother filed a police report. His badly beaten body was found about a week later in a wooded area at the end of a dead-end road about 21/2 miles from his trailer in Polk County. Nine days later, Cook’s blood-spattered turquoise car was found in an adjacent San Jacinto County in a wooded area.
At Pursley’s trial, witnesses testified they saw him driving a car matching the description of Cook’s car, that the car had blood on the inside and outside, and that Pursley’s clothes were bloody. A cousin testified that Pursley told him he was “pretty sure he had beaten someone to death in his car,” according to court documents. DNA evidence found on a cigarette butt in the ashtray of Cook’s car was used to link Pursley to the vehicle.
Pursley, who declined to speak with reporters on death row, said on a prison pen pal Web site that the case and testimony against him were false. “Most of the evidence used against me was fabricated, botched, tainted, and yes, even planted!” he wrote.
At his trial, however, he refused to cooperate with his lawyers and turned down an offer of a life prison term in exchange for a guilty plea. Polk County jurors who decided he should be put to death heard of his previous convictions for burglary and theft, his three prison terms and paroles and “determined there would be no more victims,” his defense attorney, Stephen Taylor, said. “It made a lot of difference with the jury,” he said of Pursley’s record.
Pursley’s repeated paroles, despite increasingly longer sentences, were attributed in part to bed shortages and court-imposed population limits at Texas prisons before a billion-dollar construction program eased the crowding problems.
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