A death row prisoner said “I don’t want to leave you baby” to his wife and thanked fellow inmates for trying to help “get my life right” in his last words before he was given a lethal injection.
Tracy Beatty, 61, was executed at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, and was pronounced dead at 6:39pm local time - 17 minutes after being injected with lethal drugs.
His lawyers' appeals that he should not be put to death because he had a history of mental illness were thrown out by the US Supreme Court.
Beatty was condemned to death for strangling his mother, Carolyn Click, after they argued in her East Texas home in November 2003.
Authorities said Beatty buried his 62-year-old mother's body beside her mobile home in Whitehouse, about 115 miles southeast of Dallas, and then spent her money on drugs and alcohol.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday morning declined an appeal from Beatty's lawyers to halt the execution and on Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously declined to commute Beatty's death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant a six-month reprieve.
In his final words he said he did not want to “leave you baby” which local media, including KLTV.com, said referred to his wife.
He also thanked other prisoners for their “encouragement to help get my life right”.
His final words in full were: “Yes I just want to thank (pause), I don’t want to leave you baby, see you when you get there. I love you.
“Thank you to all my brothers back on the unit for all the encouragement to help get my life right. Sunny, Blue I love you brothers. See you on the other side.”
His attorneys had argued that Beatty was prevented from receiving a full examination to determine whether he is intellectually disabled and possibly ineligible to be put to death. They had requested prison officials allow Beatty to be uncuffed during mental health evaluations by experts.
The experts argued that having Beatty uncuffed during neurological and other tests was crucial to evaluating his mental health and making an informed decision about intellectual disability.
In their Supreme Court petition, Beatty's lawyers said one expert who examined the inmate determined that he was "clearly psychotic and has a complex paranoid delusional belief system" and that he lives in a "complex delusional world" where he believes there is a "vast conspiracy of correctional officers who ... `torture' him via a device in his ear so he can hear their menacing voices."
Citing security and liability concerns, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice put in place an informal policy last year that would require a court order to allow an inmate to be unshackled during an expert evaluation.
Federal judges in East Texas and Houston and the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans previously ruled against Beatty's request for an evaluation without handcuffs. The federal appeals court called Beatty's request a "delay tactic."
Last week, US District Judge Charles Eskridge in Houston questioned why Beatty's lawyers had not raised any claim relating to his mental health during years of appeals. The judge said requiring handcuffs during such an evaluation is "quite simply, a rational security concern."
