Anthony Fuentes was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Robert Tate
According to court documents Anthony Fuentes and accomplices had just robbed a convenience store. Robert Tate was in the parking lot and grabbed one of the escaping robbers when Fuentes would come over the store and shoot Tate twice in the chest killing him
Anthony Fuentes would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Anthony Fuentes would be executed by lethal injection on November 17 2004
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When Was Anthony Fuentes Executed
Anthony Fuentes was executed on November 17 2004
Anthony Fuentes Case
Convicted killer Anthony Fuentes was executed tonight for fatally shooting a man who tried to nab the robber of a Houston convenience store 10 years ago. Fuentes, 30, denied he was responsible for killing Robert Tate, 28, who became known as a slain good Samaritan, although Fuentes acknowledged he was with three companions when they were holding up the store.
Fuentes, in a brief statement, said repeatedly that he had found peace. “Sorry that I have to put my family through this,” he said. Among those watching him die was his grandfather and two sisters along with two of Tate’s brothers. “To everybody else, the truth will be known,” he said. “It didn’t come out in time to save my life … “But when it comes out I hope it stops this. It is wrong for the prosecutors to lie and make witnesses say what they need them to say. The truth has always been there. I just hope everybody has their peace. Today I get mine.”
As the drugs began taking effect, he gasped slightly. Six minutes later, at 6:17 p.m. he was pronounced dead, making him the 23rd Texas prisoner to receive lethal injection this year and the first of two on consecutive evenings this week.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month rejected a request to review his case. In late appeals seeking to stop the execution, his lawyers argued prosecutors knowingly allowed false testimony against Fuentes and suppressed evidence. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed the appeal Wednesday morning. A request for a stay of execution was filed later in the day with the Supreme Court, asking the justices for time to review prosecutors’ conduct during the trial. The high court rejected the request about 20 minutes before Fuentes was scheduled to die.
“The state’s case was riddled with inconsistencies,” Fuentes’ attorneys argued. “The evidence connecting him to the shooting was so tenuous.” Vic Wisner, an assistant district attorney in Harris County who prosecuted the case, denied the claims. He said the men who robbed the store with Fuentes pointed to him as the gunman. It took two years before authorities could piece together the case and arrest Fuentes and his three companions. His accomplices received prison terms for aggravated robbery. Fuentes got a death sentence.
“What Texas doesn’t realise is that I am not afraid to die and they can never break me,” Fuentes wrote on an Internet site devoted to his case.
Court documents show Tate was outside the store when Fuentes and his group showed up. One of them, Kelvin Templeton, grabbed a couple cases of beer and walked out as Fuentes and Steve Vela, both armed, went to the counter. Vela demanded money from the clerk while Fuentes confronted the store owner and another customer. A friend of Tate’s was walking in, noticed the robbery in progress, and went back outside to inform Tate, who began chasing Templeton. Tate nabbed him, but according to a witness, Fuentes emerged from the store, ran up to Tate and shot him twice. Templeton testified against Fuentes, saying he didn’t see the shooting but believed Fuentes fired the shots. Defense attorneys at his trial said there was conflicting testimony as to who killed Tate.
Fuentes had two previous convictions. He pleaded guilty and spent a year in the Harris County Jail for shooting a man in the leg with a shotgun in 1992. Eight months before the Tate slaying, he pleaded guilty to an attempted murder charge and was placed on probation for shooting a man who was sitting in a car.
On Thursday, another Texas inmate, Troy Kunkle, was set to die for fatally shooting a Corpus Christi man during a robbery more than 20 years ago when Kunkle was an 18-year-old high school student in San Antonio. In July, Kunkle received a reprieve from the Supreme Court the same day he was supposed to be executed. The court last month refused to review his case, lifting the reprieve and setting the execution date.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2906522
