Keith Clay was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Melathethil Varughese
According to court documents Keith Clay would go into a store where he would shoot and kill clerk Melathethil Varughese during a robbery
Keith Clay would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Keith Clay would be executed by lethal injection on March 20 2003
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When Was Keith Clay Executed
Keith Clay was executed on March 20 2003
Keith Clay Case
An apologetic Keith Clay was executed tonight, becoming the 300th inmate put to death in Texas since the state resumed the death penalty 20 years ago. In a brief statement, Clay asked God to “forgive me of every single solitary sin I have committed these 35 years I have lived upon this Earth.”
Then Clay looked at three members of his victim’s family, who were watching through a nearby window, and asked them for forgiveness. “I know you have suffered a great loss and I am truly, truly sorry. …There is not a day that I have not prayed for you,” he said. Clay then turned to his mother, watching through an adjacent window. He told her he loved her and said “The Lord is my shepherd. Let everyone know that I love them. This is not goodbye. I will see you later.” His mother, Cynthia Smith, smiled and flashed two thumbs up to him.
He began praying softly to himself as the drugs began taking effect. He gasped three times. His eyes briefly widened and rolled back before his eyes closed. Eight minutes later at 6:23 p.m., he was pronounced dead. Clay’s execution, the 11th this year in the nation’s most active execution state, came a week after another inmate, Delma Banks, avoided lethal injection and the notoriety of No. 300 when he won a last-minute reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Clay, 35, was condemned for fatally shooting a convenience store clerk during a 1994 robbery in Baytown, just east of Houston. The Supreme Court last week refused to review his case and the state parole board refused to consider a clemency petition because it was filed 15 days too late. “Whatever God’s will is for my life I’m going to accept,” Clay said from death row last week. “I refer to my faith. Lord Jesus, he was wrongly convicted for something he didn’t do and paid the price.”
Clay’s injection keeps Texas on a pace to surpass the record 40 lethal injections carried out in 2000. Another is scheduled for next week and three more are scheduled for April. Texas accounts for more than one-third of the 838 executions in the United States since 1976 when the death penalty resumed under a Supreme Court ruling. Virginia is second with 87. It took nearly 13 years for Texas to reach 100 executions, four years get to No. 200 and now, as the appeals process has become more streamlined, just over three to reach the 300th.
Clay’s case failed to generate the kind of attention paid last week to Banks, who contended he was wrongly convicted of a 1980 slaying near Texarkana. Banks’ appeals were bolstered by the backing of three former federal judges, including former FBI director William Sessions. Clay, an acknowledged former drug dealer who authorities said also was involved in a triple slaying in 1993, attracted no similar support.
Clay was convicted of killing store clerk Melathethil Tom Varughese, who came to the United States from India a year earlier, in a $2,000 robbery. “I’m not happy to see someone put to death, but I know that the trial was a fair trial, he was represented by good counsel and it was a horrible crime,” said Marie Munier, the Harris County district attorney who prosecuted Clay. “I think it’s justice. It’s not that it makes me happy at all, but it’s just the price he will pay for his actions.”
Clay denied participating in the Varughese killing and denied any role in the Christmas Eve 1993 fatal shootings of three people, including two children, at a Baytown home. He was not tried for the triple slayings although a companion was sent to death row. Clay said he was outside the Baytown store where Varughese worked and in a car when the clerk was gunned down Jan. 4, 1994. A witness, however, identified Clay as the gunman. Evidence showed his gun was one of the two used in the shooting.
“I’ve been praying for the victim’s family, for my family,” Clay said from death row. “With regard to me being down here, if there’s one thing I could put my finger on, it would be decisions were made that bring about consequences, whether good or bad. What you do or say not only affects your life but others as well.”
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/1828658
