A former suburban Houston police officer was executed for hiring two people to kill his estranged wife nearly 30 years ago amid a contentious divorce and custody battle.
Prosecutors have argued the hypnosis produced no new information and no new identification. They had also said that Fratta had repeatedly expressed his desire to see his wife dead and asked several acquaintances if they knew anyone who would kill her, telling one friend, “I’ll just kill her, and I’ll do my time and when I get out, I’ll have my kids,” according to court records. Prystash and Guidry were also sent to death row for the slaying.
Fratta was also one of four Texas death row inmates who sued to stop the state’s prison system from using what they allege are expired and unsafe execution drugs. There had been some doubt if Fratta’s execution would take place after civil court Judge Catherine Mauzy in Austin earlier Tuesday issued a temporary injunction in the lawsuit that would have prevented the state’s prison system from using what she believed is likely expired and medically compromised pentobarbital — the drug Texas uses in its lethal injection.
The execution was carried out after Texas’ top criminal appeals court overturned the injunction and the state’s supreme court rejected an appeal. Mauzy’s order conflicted with last week’s edict from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that barred her from issuing any orders in the lawsuit that would halt any execution.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles last week unanimously declined to commute Fratta’s death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant a 60-day reprieve.Fratta was first sentenced to death in 1996, but his conviction was overturned by a federal judge who ruled that confessions from his co-conspirators shouldn’t have been admitted into evidence.
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