Harold Barnard Executed For Tuan Nguyen Murder

Harold Barnard was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Tuan Nguyen

According to court documents Harold Barnard would enter a 7-11 and shoot and kill the clerk sixteen year old Tuan Nguyen. Tuan Nguyen father owned the store

Harold Barnard would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Harold Barnard would be executed by lethal injection on February 2 1994

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A 51-year-old inmate was executed by injection early today for killing a convenience store clerk in a 1980 holdup from which he came away empty-handed.

The inmate, Harold Barnard, went to his death at the state prison here after the Supreme Court rejected late-hour appeals in Washington. The appeals contended that he was mentally incompetent and that he was drunk at the time of the slaying.

Mr. Barnard was convicted of murdering Tuan Nguyen, a 16-year-old honor student, at a 7-Eleven in Galveston, Tex., owned by the boy’s father. Mr. Barnard shot the teen-ager once in the heart with a sawed-off rifle. The boy and his father had filled a bag with money, but Mr. Barnard and his three accomplices fled empty-handed. They were arrested in a stolen car 30 minutes later. Questions of Understanding

“There was absolutely no provocation, and the robbery apparently had been complete and Barnard had the money in his hand,” said Jack Brock, who prosecuted Mr. Barnard. “This certainly was a case appropriate for the death penalty, and 12 jurors agreed.”

Mr. Barnard said at his trial that he had intended only to wound the teen-ager. His accomplices were convicted of lesser charges and have been paroled after serving prison terms.

Defense lawyers argued that Mr. Barnard suffered from paranoid delusions and that he did not understand his punishment.

Other death row inmates said Harold Barnard, a former carpenter, once hurled a typewriter through his cell bars and occasionally went on screaming binges that lasted two days or more.