Kevin Watts was executed by the State of Texas for a triple murder
According to court documents Kevin Watts would rob a restaurant where he would shoot and kill Hak Po Kim, 30,Yuan Tzu Banks, 52, and cook Chae Sun Shook, 59. Watts would take the wife of the owner hostage who would be sexually assaulted but able to escape
Kevin Watts would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Kevin Watts would be executed by lethal injection on October 16 2008
Kevin Watts Photos
Kevin Watts FAQ
When Was Kevin Watts Executed
Kevin Watts was executed on October 16 2008
Kevin Watts Case
Condemned killer Kevin Watts quietly went to his death as the criminal justice system he said he detested executed him for a triple slaying in San Antonio 6 1/2 years ago.
The street gangster received lethal injection Thursday evening for fatally shooting three people in the holdup of a Korean restaurant. Watts, 27, had confessed to the shootings where one of the victims’ newlywed wife also was abducted and raped. Watts had denounced the sentence at the conclusion of his trial in 2003.
Then earlier this year, returning to the Bexar County court where a jury convicted him of capital murder and decided he should die, Watts confronted the judge scheduling his execution with an obscenity-laced tirade complaining about what he contended was a racist justice system. The judge ordered the courtroom cleared when his relatives also became disruptive. When Watts was returned, deputies had covered his face with a mask. And when he renewed his outburst, the judge finally ordered him out and set the execution for Thursday.
But strapped to the death chamber gurney Thursday night, his demeanor was subdued. He spoke softly, telling friends he appreciated their love and support and asked them to forgive him. He also urged his fellow prisoners to “keep your heads up.” “I’m out of here, man,” he concluded. “I’m gone. Keep me in your hearts.” The lethal drugs began flowing and he asked to say something else. “I’m dying but…,” he said, unable to say more because the drugs took effect. Seven minutes later, at 6;17 p.m. CDT, he was pronounced dead.
Watts became the second Texas inmate executed this week and the 11th this year. Two more are set to die next week in the nation’s most active capital punishment state.
Watts’ appeals were exhausted. Without his lawyer’s knowledge, he filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court contending mental retardation should make him ineligible for execution, but the court returned it without consideration because there was no evidence to support the claim.
Watts walked into the Sam Won Gardens restaurant the morning of March 1, 2002, after a night of drinking and drugs and demanded money. “My intent was to put food on the table, get some money, go home and live happily ever after,” Watts said last week in a death row interview. “The situation gets out of control and one thing leads to another. When I woke up in the county jail, I said to myself: ‘I ain’t getting out.’ “
He ordered manager Hak Po Kim, 30, and cooks Yan Tzu Banks, 52, and Chae Sun Shook, 59, to kneel on the kitchen floor and face a wall. Then he shot each of them in the head. He forced Kim’s wife of two months to retrieve the wallet and keys from her dying husband, grabbed about $100 from a cash register, then drove off with her in Kim’s SUV.
The truck was spotted at a nearby apartment complex parking lot and police arrested Watts about three hours after the shootings. “He was caught with a victim by the police as he’s trying to escape and he had the murder weapon literally tied around his neck,” Bill Pennington, the Bexar County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Watts, said. None of the relatives of the victims attended Watts’ execution Thursday evening.
Watts was from San Jose, Calif. He said when he was about 14 his mother tried to get him away from gangs there and moved him to San Antonio to live with an aunt. But he said he hooked up with gangs in the Alamo city, dropping out of high school in the ninth grade. “I became a full-time participant in the street life,” he said.
Watts’ record included misdemeanor convictions for evading arrest, criminal mischief, trespassing, marijuana possession and driving while intoxicated. He also had a weapons case against him as a 16-year-old.
At the time of the shootings, he had an infant daughter. The night before the slayings, witnesses said he’d been drinking “thug passion,” a champagne and cognac drink made famous by slain gangster rap singer Tupac Shakur, snorting cocaine and taking numerous pills.
On Tuesday, Joseph Ries, 29, is the first of two prisoners set to die next week. He was convicted of breaking into a rural home in Hopkins County in northeast Texas and fatally shooting and taking the car of Robert Ratliff, 64, who was asleep.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6063853.html
