Leslie Martin was executed by the State of Louisiana for the murder of Christina Burgin
According to court documents Leslie Martin was seen with Christina Burgin leaving a nightclub. The nineteen year old college student would not be seen alive again. Martin would sexually assault and murder the young woman who was killed with a board placed across her neck and he would jump up and down on it
Leslie Martin would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Leslie Martin would be executed by lethal injection on May 10 2002
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When Was Leslie Martin Executed
Leslie Martin was executed on May 10 2002
Leslie Martin Case
The first convict to be executed in Louisiana in almost two years died of lethal injection Friday night for the 1991 rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman in Lake Charles. Leslie Dale Martin, 35, was pronounced dead at 8:16 p.m. in the Louisiana State Penitentiary’s death chamber. The parents of Christina Burgin, whose body was found in a rice field pumphouse 11 years ago, were among the witnesses.
“My smile says it all. That’s it,” her father, Charles Burgin, told reporters within minutes of Martin’s death. Burgin’s mother, Diane Godeaux, said she was “ecstatic.” When one of Martin’s attorneys, Clive Stafford-Smith, appeared to speak, the Burgin family marched out of the room. “He is very sorry for what happened,” Stafford-Smith said. “We are all better than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
Martin, born in Shreveport, became the 27th convict put to death in Louisiana since the penalty was reinstated in 1979, and the 27th person executed in the United States this year. “No comment,” Martin said before his death. Witnesses said he also mouthed the words, “You’re fired,” to his attorney. His death came the day after the state of Maryland suspended all executions pending a study of whether the ultimate penalty is unfairly applied to black people, and almost 24 hours after an Alabama woman died in the state’s electric chair for the 1993 murder of a small-town police sergeant. Louisiana’s last execution was June 6, 2000, the only one that year.
Martin’s attorneys, Stafford-Smith and Denise LeBoeuf, filed a storm of appeals in recent weeks. One was a petition accusing Gov. Mike Foster of uniformly ignoring appeals for clemency from violent felons, which a Baton Rouge judge denied Thursday. Martin never applied for a pardon review, a process his attorneys call a sham. He had received five stays of execution since his conviction in 1992, the most recent coming Feb. 9 from the U.S. Supreme Court, about 30 minutes from the time the prison expected the execution to begin. The court later refused to hear the case.
Protests were planned Friday night at Angola, at the Louisiana Supreme Court in New Orleans and at the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge. The Moratorium Campaign, based in New Orleans and led by Sister Helen Prejean, demanded a reprieve for Martin all week, but the call drew no substantive political support.
Burgin was killed June 20, 1991, after leaving a bar with Martin. Prosecutors said Martin raped and stabbed Burgin, and then jumped on a board placed over her neck and gouged out her eyes. She was identified by dental records. Martin admitted killing Burgin, but said it happened during a drunken argument that arose after they had consensual sex. He always denied raping her, the element that made it a death penalty case.
On Friday at about 4:45 p.m., Martin ate his last meal: boiled crawfish, crawfish stew, a garden salad with Italian dressing, oatmeal cookies and whole milk with chocolate syrup. His mother and sister visited with him earlier, leaving at 3:30 p.m. Martin, who studied Buddhism, spent his final hours with his spiritual adviser, Paula Emanuel, who lives in the Netherlands. “My opinion is any criminal has been many, many times a victim before,” she said Friday night. “But I know it doesn’t count in this country.”
On death row, Martin spent 23 hours a day in a single-man cell. He had said that he would rather die by lethal injection than live the rest of his days in prison with “the irrational hope of freedom.” Martin had been imprisoned before. About 15 months before Burgin was killed, Martin was released after serving time for a 1984 sexual battery on his 14-year-old sister. Since 1991, Martin had glimpsed his freedom only once in a brief escape from death row, a first for Angola.
In the prison museum outside the main gate, an exhibit documents his role in the 1999 breakout of four condemned inmates. He and his cohorts were caught within hours. On the adjacent wall of the museum hang a series of picture frames displaying mug shots of the 26 men executed by Louisiana since the state brought back the death penalty in 1979. Ninety men and one woman remain on the state’s death row.
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