Ronford Styron was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of his eleven month old infant Lee Styron
According to court documents Ronford Styron would punch his eleven month old son numerous times. Three days later Styron would bring the infant to the hospital however it was too late and Lee Styron would die from his injuries. It would turn out that Ronford had abused his son for the majority of his young life
Ronford Styron would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Ronford Styron would be executed by lethal injection on May 16 2002
Ronford Styron Photos
Ronford Styron FAQ
When Was Ronford Styron Executed
Ronford Styron was executed on May 10 2002
Ronford Styron Case
An unemployed laborer with a history of aggressive behavior was executed Thursday for fatally beating his 11-month-old son 8 1/2 years ago. Ronford Styron, 32, told family and friends that he loved them and was worried about them. “I’m going to go and be with my little boy and I’m going to have fun with him,” he said, smiling and looking at relatives, including his mother and grandmother, who watched through a window. “I know where I’m going. I want to see all of you there. You get your hearts right,” he said. He sputtered and gasped and stopped moving. He was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m., seven minutes after the lethal dose began.
Styron, from Dayton in Liberty County, acknowledged he punched the child once in the head but contended in last-day appeals to the courts that he didn’t intend to kill his son. The U.S. Supreme Court refused Thursday afternoon to review his case. He was the 12th Texas inmate put to death this year and second this month. Three more executions are set for May, including one next week.
The death of Lee Hollace Styron culminated what authorities said was repeated abuse and months of mistreatment that had left the baby with numerous broken bones and other injuries. “Except somebody who kills hundreds or thousands of people, I don’t see how you can get a more heinous offense,” Steve Greene, who prosecuted Styron in 1994, said this week. “He basically tortured the child through most of his short life.” The child was one month shy of his first birthday when he died Oct. 28, 1993, at Houston’s Texas Children’s Hospital, three days after he was brought into an emergency room in Liberty, about 40 miles east of Houston. When the child’s injuries did not match information presented to physicians treating the comatose infant, authorities began investigating. It was just weeks after a then-new Texas law took effect that made accused killers of children under the age of 6 eligible for the death penalty. “We were going for the death penalty because a child is the most helpless person you can have, especially an 11-month-old baby,” Greene said.
Medical examiners found the baby suffered three recent blows to the head and any of them could have been fatal. At least 10 bones were broken in previous injuries. Testimony showed Styron stuffed the child’s mouth with tape to stop him from crying, palmed his head like a basketball, dunked him in ice water, squeezed his chest hard enough to break ribs and shook him so hard the retinas of his eyes hemorrhaged. “I won’t be forgetting him,” Greene said. “It was really a sad case.”
Psychologists found Styron hostile, aggressive and a person who held grudges and had trouble with authority figures. Testimony showed Styron was booted out of school for fighting and let go from the military for punching a sergeant, that he beat up a neighbor, kicked and shot at his own car and brawled with another motorist on the side of a Houston freeway. Relatives told investigators they thought of reporting Styron to child protective officials but feared him. Although he had not been in prison before, he had been on probation twice for a weapons offense and assault.
Greene said prosecutors had no evidence to tie Styron’s wife and the child’s mother to any of the abuse although the home conditions were described as filthy. “She just wasn’t a very attentive mother,” Greene said. “There was evidence both of them had been unfaithful at different times and he doubted the baby was really his, even though his family said the child looked a lot like him.”