David Aaron Martinez was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Kiersa Paul
According to court documents David Aaron Martinez would sexually assault and murder twenty four year old Kiersa Paul before stealing her bike and belongings
David Aaron Martinez would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
David Aaron Martinez would be executed by lethal injection on July 28 2005
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When Was David Aaron Martinez Executed
David Aaron Martinez was executed on July 28 2005
David Aaron Martinez Case
former Austin drifter was executed Thursday evening for the rape-slaying of a Minnesota woman attacked on a jogging trail eight years ago. David Martinez received lethal injection for the 1997 killing of Kiersa Paul, a 24-year-old former art student who said she was going to meet him at a popular Austin park.
“Only the sky and green grass goes on forever, and today is a good day to die,” Martinez said in a brief statement before being put to death. He was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m. Paul’s parents, with another of their daughters, watched through a window a few feet away from Martinez. He made brief eye contact but said nothing to them. Martinez, 29, was the 10th prisoner to receive lethal injection this year in Texas.
Attorneys tried to block the execution with an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that prosecutors in Travis County should have done more to investigate claims of Martinez’s abusive childhood. Moments before Martinez was scheduled to die, the high court rejected the appeals.
Martinez was convicted of capital murder for the death of Paul, a University of Minnesota sophomore art student who came to Austin to visit her sister in 1996. Eight years ago last week, Paul told her sister she was heading out on her bicycle to a popular Austin park along the Barton Creek greenbelt to meet someone she knew only as “Wolf,” which was Martinez’s nickname. The next morning, her body was found by a jogger. She’d been raped and strangled, had her throat cut at least eight times and had an “X” carved into her chest. Martinez was arrested days later. A Travis County jury deliberated 15 minutes at his 1998 trial before convicting him of capital murder.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3287297
