Richard Cartwright was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Nick Moraida
According to court documents Richard Cartwright and two accomplices would lure Nick Moraida to a beach where he as fatally shot and robbed
Richard Cartwright would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Richard Cartwright would be executed by lethal injection on May 19 2005
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When Was Richard Cartwright Executed
Richard Cartwright was executed on May 19 2005
Richard Cartwright Case
A former mechanic from Chicago was executed Thursday for the robbery and fatal shooting of a Corpus Christi man.
In a brief final statement, Richard Cartwright thanked his friends and family for their support. “I want to apologize to the victim’s family for any pain and suffering I caused them,” he said. Then he urged his fellow death row inmates to “just keep your heads up and stay strong.” Cartwright, 31, was the eighth Texas prisoner put to death this year and the second in as many days.
Cartwright was one of three men who duped Nick Moraida into thinking they were homosexuals offering to share beer with him at a beachfront park along Corpus Christi Bay in 1996. Instead, Moraida was stabbed then shot to death while being robbed of his watch and wallet containing between $60 and $200. His assailants hoped to use the money to buy drugs and alcohol. Moraida’s body was spotted by two fishermen the next morning in some sea grass.
Kelly Overstreet, 27, and Dennis Hagood, 28, are serving long prison terms. They agreed to plea bargains and testified against Cartwright. Less than an hour before his scheduled lethal injection, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a late appeal in which Cartwright’s lawyers argued he was condemned by a Nueces County jury because of testimony Overstreet now insisted was false.
Overstreet originally placed much of the blame for the shooting on Cartwright, but in a written statement to Cartwright’s lawyers earlier this month, Overstreet said he was “upset at being turned in by Hagood and Cartwright.” “I intentionally made Cartwright out to be the bad guy out of spite when in fact I am the one who was at the forefront of all events,” Overstreet wrote.
In the appeal to the Supreme Court, Cartwright’s attorneys argued that jurors relied on inaccurate information at the trial. And while not denying Cartwright fired the shots that killed Moraida, 37, the appeal said Cartwright participated in the robbery-slaying under duress because he feared retaliation from Overstreet, who had a reputation for violence. “At most he merely followed orders from a violent person whom he was afraid of and who had already threatened him,” the appeal said.
State attorneys argued it was “incredible” that Cartwright, armed with a gun, felt threatened by Overstreet, who had a knife. They also said Overstreet’s new statements, which they called “inherently unreliable,” did “nothing to establish actual innocence” or undermine Cartwright’s culpability. “No credible explanation has been given as to why Overstreet waited eight years to come forward with his testimony,” the Texas attorney general’s office said in its response to the high court.
“I am just another statistic in the dubious title held by the State of Texas – death penalty capital of the world,” Cartwright, who declined to speak with reporters, wrote on an anti-death penalty Web site. “There are many reasons that this is wrong, not the least of which is that I did not commit the crime for which I was convicted and sentenced to death.”
Mark Skurka, the trial prosecutor, said Cartwright “was a mean guy, a hard guy.” Cartwright previously had a two-year jail term in Illinois for a drug conviction.
Just before his trial, Cartwright wrote letters from jail to his partners urging them to all agree on a single story. The letters were intercepted by authorities. “They were very incriminating,” Skurka said. “That helped hang him. We had the co-defendants, the accomplices, and we had to have corroborating testimony, and he provided it.”
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