As promised here last week, the State of Texas executed convicted murderer and rapist Rickey Lynn Lewis. More executions are set to follow.
Last week, the State of Florida executed Larry Eugene Mann after three decades on death row. At the same time, the State of Texas was preparing to execute Rickey Lynn Lewis. Today, that execution was carried out by due process of law.
In September 1990, Lewis committed two crimes against Connie Hilton. He murdered the man she had expected to spend the rest of her life with, and then he raped her. There were the usual last minute appeals from the condemned man’s legal team, but to no avail. According to the London Daily Mail, Lewis made a really bizarre last statement, telling his surviving victim: “If I hadn’t raped you then you wouldn’t have lived.”
This was a reference to his co-conspirators, neither of whom were caught and whom Lewis always refused to identify.
His was the second execution in the State of Texas this year, and there are further lined up. Although the anti-death penalty movement has never been stronger in the United States, at a time when the Boston bombing is dominating the news on both sides of the Atlantic, there will be precious little sympathy for anyone sentenced to death for committing such dreadful acts of wanton brutality.
[The above was first published April 16, 2013; the original wasn’t archived.]
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