Billy White was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Martha Laura Spinks
According to court documents Billy White would rob a furniture store that was owned by Martha Laura Spinks and her husband. During the armed robbery Martha Laura Spinks would be fatally shot
Billy White would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Billy White would be executed by lethal injection on April 23 1992
Billy White Photos
Billy White Case
Billy Wayne White, 34, a former dump truck driver convicted for shooting a woman during a Houston furniture store robbery, was executed by lethal injection early Thursday.
It was the fifth execution in Texas this year and the 47th the state has carried out since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to resume in 1976
Before the execution began at 12:49 CDT, White responded with a whispered, ‘No sir,’ when asked if he had any final words. After the injection, he gasped two times and his eyes blinked twice before he passed out.
White, on death row since 1978, was pronounced dead nine minutes later, at 12:58 a.m.
Neither the family of the victim nor family of White was in attendance.
The U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday denied a bid for a stay of execution
Attorneys with the Texas Resource Center and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York sought the stay and a petition asking the court for a full review of the case.
Attorneys asked Gov. Ann Richards and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to halt White’s execution by granting a reprieve to allow the board to evaluate evidence that he is mentally retarded
Mandy Welch, an attorney with the Texas Resource Center in Austin, said Welch was deemed mentally retarded when he was 8 years old, and he was enrolled in special education classes in Houston at that time.
But White’s mental status was never brought out during the one-day trial, Welch said.
‘Billy slept through part of it — we felt that was a clear indication something was wrong with him,’ Welch said of White’s conduct during his trial.
Prosecutors said White demanded money from store owners Alge and Martha Spinks in a holdup on Aug. 23, 1976. White shot the woman at point-blank range and ordered Alge Spinks to lie on the floor, but Spinks grabbed White’s gun and shot him in the groin during a struggle.
White fled the store but was arrested nearby with a gun and $269 in stolen money in his pocket.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/04/23/Texas-inmate-executed/6317704001600/