Thursday, January 22, 2015

FIRST TEXAS EXECUTION OF 2015 GOES ON WITHOUT A HITCH

Arnold Prieto was put to death Wednesday for the 1993 stabbing deaths of three elderly San Antonio residents during a robbery

Arnold Pietro, 41, was put to death Wednesday by the State of Texas for the September 1993 fatal stabbings of Rodolfo Rodriguez, 72, his wife, Virginia, 62, and Paula Moran, their 90-year-old former nanny who lived with them in their San Antonio home. Pietro and two accomplices intended to rob the Rodriguezes, believing there was $10,000 in their home from which they ran a check cashing business.

The execution, which was carried out with a single dose of pentobarbital, went on without a hitch. The Associated Press reports that as the injection began, Pietro said he could smell it. He uttered “Whoa” before he began snoring, with each snore a bit more quiet. After the fifth snore he stopped moving. Pietro was pronounced dead 20 minutes after the execution began.

Pietro was not only a triple murderer, he was an idiot triple murderer. He was offered a plea deal of less than life in prison if he would testify against brothers Jesse and Guadalupe Hernandez, his crime partners in the murderous robbery. Pietro refused the plea deal and ended up as the only member of the trio to be sentenced to death.

Jesse, now 38, was 17 at the time of the murders, making him too young to be executed. He is serving life in prison. Guadalupe was never prosecuted because, without Pietro’s testimony against him, the state lacked sufficient evidence for a conviction.

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