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A Texas man who was convicted of fatally stabbing identical twin teenage girls almost 35-years ago apologized to his victims and broke out into song before being executed.
Garcia White was administered a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville on Tuesday evening.
White, 61, had been condemned for stabbing 16-year-olds Annette and Bernette Edwards to death in their Houston apartment in December 1989. White committed a total of five murders in the years before his arrest in July 1995, authorities said.
“I am sorry for all the pain I have caused to anyone,” the murderer told witnesses during his final remarks. “I just ask you to please find comfort and closure in your heart.”
He finally sang the hymn “I Trust in God” moments before toxic chemicals flooded into his bloodstream.
White went to Edwards sisters’ mother, Bonita Edwards, Houston home to smoke crack cocaine, according to court records. The pair began arguing, resulting in the mother being fatally stabbed.
Following the altercation, the twins suffered the same harrowing fate as their mom. White battered down the girls’ locked bedroom door before they were stabbed “several times in the chest,” authorities said.
“Evidence also indicated that White sexually assaulted Bernette, whose body was found in a back bedroom,” according to White’s inmate records held by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
White claimed he was suffering from “cocaine psychosis,” which diminished his mental capacity.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg contested that White “knew what he was doing” during the “brutal stabbings”.
Court records show White also confessed on video to two other murders. The first victim was Greta Williams, who he beat to death and rolled in a carpet in 1989, while he also confessed to the slaying of Hai Pham, a grocery store assistant he beat to death during a robbery in 1995.
Upon being probed by a Houston police detective during his July 1995 confession, White admitted that the twin girls “didn’t deserve” to die, adding that he didn’t alert authorities about his crimes because he was “scared,” according to Click2Houston.
“Garcia Glenn White committed five murders in three different transactions and two of his victims were teenage girls,” wrote Josh Reiss, chief of the post-conviction writs division with the county DA’s office, in comments before the execution.
“This is the type of case that the death penalty was intended for.”
Five members of Williams’ family and two members of Pham’s family witnessed White’s execution. It is not clear if any Edwards family members bore witnesses to White’s death.
Speaking on the victims’ families behalf, Ogg said in a statement: “The suffering that the surviving family members have gone through is just unspeakable. They’ve waited through appeal, after appeal, after appeal.”
After having petitions rejected by the Texas appeals court, White’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to stop his execution.
On Friday, The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied the request.
White’s legal team argued that Texas’s top criminal appeals court has refused “to accept medical evidence and strong factual backing” showing White is intellectually disabled – with the Supreme Court banning the execution of individuals with said disability.
The high court did give states some autonomy to decide a way of constituting what it means to be intellectually disabled. Justices have debated over how much discretion to allow.
White’s lawyers also accused the lower court of refusing them the chance to present other evidence that they claim may have spared him from the death sentence.
It included alleged DNA evidence that another man was also at the crime scene and scientific evidence claiming White was “likely suffering from a cocaine induced psychotic break during his actions”.
Defense attorney Patrick McCann said Tuesday that his client had spent his time in prison “working to be a better human being”.
“I took that into consideration,” Ogg said in a statement.
“But it just could not outweigh the butchered families and their surviving family members who still wanted the death penalty served on him.”
