Donald Miller was executed by the State of Texas for a double murder
According to court documents Donald Miller and two accomplices lured the two victims, 29 year old Michael Masingo and 19 year old Kenneth Whitt, over to their residence. The two men were bound and robbed. They would be taken to a remote location where they would be fatally shot
Donald Miller would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Donald Miller was executed on February 27 2007 by lethal injection
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When Was Donald Miller Executed
Donald Miller was executed on February 27 2007
Donald Miller Case
Twenty-five years after a fisherman found the bullet-riddled bodies of two traveling furniture salesman near Lake Houston, one of the men convicted in the case was put to death. Donald Miller quietly received lethal injection Tuesday evening for the robbery and shooting death of Michael Mozingo, 29, who was killed Feb. 2, 1982, along with his 19-year-old partner Kenneth Whitt. Prosecutors said the two were from North Carolina and had about $40,000 in furniture they were selling out of the back of their tractor-trailer truck. Mozingo also was carrying at least $5,000 in cash.
Miller, a paroled car and truck thief, was arrested about two weeks after the slayings. He had no friends or relatives witness his execution and had no visitors in the three days preceding the punishment. Also, no relatives of the victims in the case were present to see him die.
“He was quiet, very polite and noncommittal,” said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Byron Hays, who talked with Miller when the prisoner arrived at the death house in Huntsville at midday Tuesday. Strapped to the gurney and with needles in each arm, Miller, 44, was asked by the warden if he had a final statement. His reply was a single shake of his head. Six minutes later, Miller was pronounced dead.
Miller, who was 19 when he was arrested, was tried only for Mozingo’s murder. His execution was the sixth this year in Texas, the nation’s most active capital punishment state. Five more convicted murderers are set to die next month, including two next week. Miller, approaching a quarter-century on death row, was one of the longest serving of the 386 Texas prisoners awaiting lethal injection.
The U.S. Supreme Court in October refused to review his case. A late appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was turned down Monday. Federal appeals already had been exhausted. Miller declined to speak with reporters in the weeks preceding his scheduled execution. In a letter to the Houston Chronicle, however, he said he was “connected to this case just not to the degree portrayed at trial.” He told authorities he was involved in the robbery but not the shootings.
Court records show Miller and companions Danny Woods and Eddie Segura lured the furniture salesmen to Segura’s house for a delivery. When the pair arrived, they were confronted by Miller, armed with a handgun, and Woods, who pulled out a shotgun. The two men were robbed, gagged and bound with electrical tape, then taken to an area near Lake Houston in northeast Harris County. Testimony showed Miller shot Mozingo in the head, firing at least five times and continuing to fire even after the bullets in his pistol ran out. Woods’ shotgun was fired with such force the wood stock broke.
Segura pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery charges, was sentenced to two 25-year prison terms and was the key prosecution witness against Miller. He was released from prison last October. Woods pleaded guilty to murder, received two life terms but did not testify. He’s next eligible for parole in April 2008.
A federal judge threw out Miller’s death sentence in 2004, ruling prosecutors improperly withheld evidence. But the following year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court ruling.
In 1980 Miller pleaded guilty to stealing a truck and was placed on probation, then pleaded guilty to stealing a car seven months later, revoking his probation. Records show he was involved in an armed robbery of illegal drugs and was planning another robbery when the killings occurred. Miller’s case predated changes in appeals procedures intended to move death penalty cases through the courts faster.
Scheduled to die after Miller is Robert “Beaver” Perez, 48, identified as a general in the Mexican Mafia prison gang. Perez faces execution March 6 for the slayings of two men during a power struggle within the gang in 1994.
