Jonathan Green was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of twelve year old Christina Neal
According to court documents Jonathan Green would kidnap twelve year old Christina Neal who would be brought back to his home and sexually assaulted. Authorities would find the body of Christina Neal a month later at Green’s residence
Jonathan Green would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Jonathan Green would be executed by lethal injection on October 11 2012
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When Was Jonathan Green Executed
Jonathan Green was executed on October 11 2012
Jonathan Green Case
After 12 years and numerous appeals, Jonathan Marcus Green still claimed his innocence in the brutal rape and murder of a 12-year-old West Montgomery County girl as he was executed late Wednesday night.
“I’m an innocent man, I did not kill anyone,” Green said as the fatal lethal injection went into his arm. “Y’all are killing an innocent man. My left arm is killing me; it hurts bad.”
Green, 44, of Montgomery, was on death row for the 2000 abduction, rape and murder of 12-year-old Christina Leann Neal, whose family lived across the road from Green.
“A lot of mixed emotions. We weren’t sure whether it was going to happen or not. It was nerve-racking,” said Laura Neal, Christina’s mother.
Just before 6 p.m. Wednesday — the scheduled time for his execution — the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal by Green to halt his death by lethal injection.
Then, just a few minutes later, Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials received word that James Rytting, Green’s appellate attorney, had filed another last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Each Supreme Court justice had to review the appeal and determine whether a stay of execution should be granted. Their decision was received after 10 p.m. Wednesday, allowing the execution to move forward
If the execution had not occurred before midnight Wednesday, the warrant for Green’s execution would have expired and 221st state District Court Judge Lisa Michalk would have been required to set a new date for execution.
Rytting had fought hard to keep his client from the execution chamber. On Monday, a federal judge in Houston stayed the execution, saying Green, a Montgomery High School football star in the mid-1980s, hadn’t been given sufficient due process to prove he was mentally incompetent.
But the Texas Attorney General’s Office argued before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday that Green’s appeal violated federal precedent by bringing up evidence not presented at trial and that the lower court abused its authority in its decision to halt the execution.
A psychiatrist who examined Green for a June 2010 competency hearing before Michalk found him schizophrenic and with a “firm delusional belief … that he did not and could not have killed Christina Neal.” Rytting said his client had described hallucinations of “ongoing spiritual warfare between two sets of voices representing good and evil.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that mental illness doesn’t disqualify people from execution as long as they understand the sentence and why they’re being punished.
A psychologist who testified for the state at the 2010 hearing found Green’s thoughts and behavior during interviews to be well organized and said Green complained of false evidence at trial and that he described how he would be put on a table and receive an injection that would kill him.
Michalk denied Green’s appeal during the 2010 hearing, but only hours before Green was to be put to death on June 30, 2010, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the execution on the grounds he was delusional and too mentally ill.
Green lived across the road from the Neal family when Christina went missing on the evening of June 21, 2000. Her sister went to look for her the next morning and found her broken glasses by the side of the road. During a two-day search, the sister found Christina’s bracelet and necklace near a pathway in woods near the Neal home, and Christina’s other sister and mother found some pink underwear they thought belonged to Christina.
An FBI special agent interviewed Green when Christina disappeared. Green denied any knowledge of her disappearance.
The agent and Montgomery County Sheriff’s Detective Don Gay spoke to Green again a few days later at Green’s house, after a neighbor remembered a big fire on Green’s property the day after Christina disappeared. Green consented to a search of the burn pile.
A probe in the ground under the burn pile indicated the ground had recently been dug up, and released an odor of decaying flesh. Green then withdrew his consent to search the burn pile.
While executing a search warrant on Green’s property, officers discovered the burn pile had been dug up to reveal a shallow grave, with a foul odor emanating from it.
Green admitted digging up the burn pile to remove trash and prove there was no body there.
A cadaver dog was brought to Green’s property and the dog started indicating near a chair in the house. Officers saw a human foot sticking out of a laundry bag stuffed behind the chair. The body – which had ligature marks on her neck and wrists -was Christina’s.
DNA and fiber evidence tied Jonathan Green to Christina’s rape and strangulation.
And on Wednesday night, the Neal family received one final resolution in the brutal killing of their daughter and sister, Christina Neal.
