07-17-2013, 12:18 PM
Texas doesn't screw around...
![[Image: Texas_Execution_244x183.jpg]](http://i.i.cbsi.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim2/2013/07/17/Texas_Execution_244x183.jpg)
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Last night, John Manuel Quintanilla received lethal injection for gunning down 60-year-old Victor Billings at a game room in Victoria, about 125 miles southwest of Houston. The 2002 slaying came just a few months after Quintanilla had been released from prison after serving a sentence for several burglary convictions.
He never acknowledged his victim's friends or relatives, including two daughters, who watched through a window.
As the lethal drug began taking effect, he snored about a half dozen times, then stopped breathing. He was pronounced dead 15 minutes after being given the drug.
Quintanilla's wife, a German national who married him by proxy while he was in prison, watched through an adjacent window and sobbed.
Quintanilla, 36, became the ninth Texas inmate to receive lethal injection this year and the 501st since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982. His was the first of two executions set for this week; the other is planned for Thursday.
Quintanilla's punishment was carried out after the U.S. Supreme Court refused two last-day appeals whereby Quintanilla's attorneys contended that his confession had been coerced (challenging witness IDs - he was wearing a mask at the time of the killing).
On Thursday, another Texas inmate is set for lethal injection. Vaughn Ross, 41, is to be executed for a double slaying in Lubbock in 2001.
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Last night, John Manuel Quintanilla received lethal injection for gunning down 60-year-old Victor Billings at a game room in Victoria, about 125 miles southwest of Houston. The 2002 slaying came just a few months after Quintanilla had been released from prison after serving a sentence for several burglary convictions.
He never acknowledged his victim's friends or relatives, including two daughters, who watched through a window.
As the lethal drug began taking effect, he snored about a half dozen times, then stopped breathing. He was pronounced dead 15 minutes after being given the drug.
Quintanilla's wife, a German national who married him by proxy while he was in prison, watched through an adjacent window and sobbed.
Quintanilla, 36, became the ninth Texas inmate to receive lethal injection this year and the 501st since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982. His was the first of two executions set for this week; the other is planned for Thursday.
Quintanilla's punishment was carried out after the U.S. Supreme Court refused two last-day appeals whereby Quintanilla's attorneys contended that his confession had been coerced (challenging witness IDs - he was wearing a mask at the time of the killing).
On Thursday, another Texas inmate is set for lethal injection. Vaughn Ross, 41, is to be executed for a double slaying in Lubbock in 2001.