Jose High was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of eleven year old Bonnie Bulloch
According to court documents Jose High and two accomplices would rob a gas station and take the owner and his eleven year old stepson Bonnie Bulloch hostage. The two were driven to a remote location where both would be shot with Bonnie Bulloch dying from his injuries
Jose High was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Jose High would be executed on November 6 2001 by lethal injection
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When Was Jose High Executed
Jose High was executed on November 6 2001
Jose High Case
A man convicted of murdering an 11-year-old boy during a 1976 gas-station robbery was executed Tuesday, the state’s second lethal injection in two weeks. Jose Martinez High, 45, was pronounced dead at 8:07 p.m., prison officials said. In a defiant final statement, High said he never fired the shot that killed 11-year-old Bonnie Bulloch. Two other men who also took part are serving life prison terms. ”I did not kill that little boy,” he said. ”I could not hurt a child.” High also said the death penalty is racist and biased against the poor. ”Poor people are on death row, and the death penalty is racist to the core. That’s it,” he said before the lethal injection began.
High, an Augusta native, was convicted of fatally shooting Bulloch in a 1976 gas-station robbery in Taliaferro County. The boy and his stepfather, who ran the gas station, were forced to lie on the ground and each was shot in the head and left for dead. The stepfather survived and later identified High as the gunman. He was convicted in 1978.
The execution is the second since the state Supreme Court threw out the electric chair last month, shifting all executions to lethal injection. A third man, Fred Marion Gilreath Jr., is scheduled to die Nov. 14. High’s execution leaves 125 inmates — 124 men and a woman — on Georgia’s death row.
At 6:40 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Court entered an order denying a petition and an application for a stay of execution. Technicians had trouble finding a suitable vein in High’s arms to deliver the chemicals. Doctors made a small incision in his chest and used a vein there as a substitute. A lethal sequence of three chemicals was pumped into High’s body through intravenous lines to take his life — the sedative sodium pentothal first, followed by Pavulon to paralyze his lungs, and potassium chloride to stop his heart. As the execution began, High rolled his head to his left and called out something unintelligible to witnesses. He blinked his eyes repeatedly, struggling to keep them open, and his eyes appeared to water. High opened his mouth to speak again but no words came out. He yawned, moved his head slightly to the left again, and lay motionless until the warden announced his death.
As part of his last words, High addressed the boy’s mother, Hazel Phillips, who was on prison grounds but did not witness the execution. ”I’m sorry about your kid, Mrs. Phillips,” he said. ”My life is a poor substitute for your son. I know how it is. Death is a universal process.” Phillips, speaking with reporters after the execution, said High was lying when he denied firing the fatal shot. ”I really hope that God forgave him,” she said. ”I really hope someday that I will have the strength to do that.” Outside prison grounds, about 30 death penalty opponents held a candlelight vigil, forming a circle as the execution took place inside. Similar peaceful protests were held in other cities throughout the state.
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