Calvin King was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Billy Ezell
According to court documents Calvin King and accomplices were at a motel smoking crack. Billy Ezell would visit the room several times to sell more drugs. Late in the night King would lure Ezell back to the room where he would be robbed and murdered
Calvin King would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Calvin King would be executed by lethal injection on September 25 2002
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When Was Calvin King Executed
Calvin King was executed on September 25 2002
Calvin King Case
A Dallas man with at least four other felony convictions was executed Wednesday evening for a robbery-slaying in Beaumont during a drug deal while he was on parole. Calvin Eugene King, 48, was the 28th Texas inmate to receive lethal injection this year and the second in as many days.
In a brief final statement, King muttered, “I want to say, God forgives as I forgive, and God is the greatest. Thank you.” As the drugs began flowing into his arms, he gurgled and then gasped twice. He was pronounced dead 11 minutes later, at 6:20 p.m.
A Jefferson County jury deliberated only 30 minutes before deciding King was guilty and deliberated just an hour before deciding he should go to death row for the fatal stabbing of Billy Wayne Ezell, 21, more than eight years ago. The U.S. Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review King’s case. Two justices, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, favored granting a reprieve.
Relatives described Ezell, from Silsbee, about 20 miles north of Beaumont, as ignorant of the ways of the city and making poor choices by choosing to sell crack cocaine in Beaumont in the days before his death. “According to one of his buddies and his mom, he was looking at this as an opportunity to make some really good money, really quickly, because he thought that would help him get back together with his estranged wife,” said Ramon Rodriguez, the Jefferson County assistant district attorney who prosecuted King. “He was just a country boy in over his head. “People at the hotel said he was flashing cash. It was not surprising somebody took advantage of him.”
Evidence showed that somebody was King, a landscaper who had been on parole for about five months after serving only four years of a 25-year prison term for burglary in Dallas County. Court records indicated Ezell was lured to a Beaumont motel Feb. 26, 1994, where he was stabbed, beaten and robbed by King and a partner, Leonard Johnson, also of Dallas. “It was a very brutal crime,” Rodriguez said this week. “We’re talking dozens of stab wounds, and then being bludgeoned with a table lamp.” The lamp cord also was wound around his neck.
Johnson pleaded guilty and received a life prison term. King got a death sentence.
In urging the jury to choose the death penalty, Rodriguez said he pointed out that King did not need to kill Ezell. “All they had to do was rob him,” he said. Testimony showed the pair took cash from Ezell and were seen at home using an oven to dry money they had washed to remove the victim’s blood.
King earlier had multiple convictions for theft out of Dallas County in the 1980s before being released on parole or mandatory supervision at a time when Texas prisons were overcrowded and court orders required some inmates to be freed. “That’s how it was back then,” Rodriguez said. “That was really frustrating.”