Clifton Russell was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Hubert Otha Tobey
According to court documents Clifton Russell and an accomplice would abduct Hubert Otha Tobey from a gas station. Tobey would be brought to an abandoned house where he was robbed and murdered
Clifton Russell would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Clifton Russell would be executed by lethal injection on January 31 1995
Clifton Russell Photos
Clifton Russell Case
Eighty-eight minutes and a clean sheet separated the deaths of two killers given lethal injections in the first multiple execution in Texas in 44 years.
Clifton Russell, condemned for the 1979 robbery-slaying of an air traffic controller in Abilene, was executed first early today. He had been on death row for 15 years.
Corrections officials removed Russell’s body from the death chamber, replaced needles and tubes used for his injection, changed the sheet on a gurney bolted to the floor and waited for Willie Williams to be driven 15 miles to the death chamber.
Williams, convicted in the 1980 murder-robbery of a Houston convenience store clerk, spent 14 years on death row.
Texas resumed capital punishment in 1982 and has executed 89 men, more by far than any other state.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, Arkansas is the only other state to execute more than one person on a single day, putting to death two killers on May 11 and three on Aug. 3. Texas officials said the double execution was a coincidence; judges set execution dates. Russell was executed first because he arrived on death row first
