HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- Locked up longer than his 23-year-old murder victim lived, condemned killer Michael Lynn Riley was executed for fatally stabbing a mother of two during a convenience store robbery in East Texas.
"For those people that may think death penalty cases don't get proper examination, this is certainly evidence that's not true," Marcus Taylor, the now-retired Wood County district attorney who prosecuted Riley and sought the death penalty, said after watching Riley's punishment carried out.
Riley, 51, apologized repeatedly in the moments before he received lethal injection Tuesday evening and became the 15th condemned prisoner executed in the nation's busiest death penalt
y state.
"I know I hurt you very bad," he told relatives of Wynona Harris, the woman stabbed and slashed in February 1986 at a store in Quitman as she was robbed of about $1,000. "I truly am sorry for the hurt and pain I caused you."
Brandy Oaks, who was 4 when her mother was killed, said she accepted Riley's apology and was pleased to hear it, although she had been prepared for the possibility Riley could wind up with a life prison term.
"This is a difficult day and there are no winners on either side," she said.
Oaks' sister, Jennifer Bevill, who was 1 1/2 at the time of the slaying, said she had to pray to seek forgiveness "for this person that has done this to your family."
"It's strange. It's almost like I never had her to begin with," Bevill said about losing her mother.
While he didn't volunteer for execution, Riley had asked friends to not pray that he receive a reprieve, and he repeated that sentiment to friends wh
o witnessed his death.
"I told you years ago that I was ready," he said.
Eight minutes later, after urging his fellow death row inmates to "stay strong" and that "Fleetwood is out of here," using his death row nickname, Riley was pronounced dead.
His appeals were exhausted and no last-ditch attempts to delay the execution were filed. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also turned down a clemency request.
Harris worked at the Shop-A-Minit convenience store in his hometown of Quitman, about 75 miles east of Dallas, and was a frequent customer. When he walked in that Saturday morning in February 1986 and asked for ice cream, she told him to help himself while she counted some money.
Instead, he attacked her with a 10-inch butcher knife, stabbing and slashing her nearly three dozen times, then fled with about $1,000 in a money bag.
A customer looking to get a gas pump turned on went inside the store and spotted Harris' battered body.
Taylor sa
id Tuesday evening Riley's death was considerably more peaceful.
"It did not have the force and violence that hers did," he said.
A milk delivery driver told police he noticed a man in distinctive coveralls hanging around outside the store. Detectives also followed bloody footprints to the murder weapon and a money bag.
Riley, who was on probation at the time for a bad check conviction, turned himself in to authorities later that day after hearing police were looking for him. After detectives recovered his coveralls and the stolen money inside them, he confessed.
Riley said gambling losses prompted the killing.
"Dice took my life," he told The Associated Press recently from prison. "It's the worst drug habit you can have."
In 2005, Riley was within days of execution when lawyers contending he was mentally disabled and ineligible for capital punishment won a court-ordered reprieve. Courts subsequently ruled he was not mentally disabled.
Besides the forgery
conviction for writing a bad check, he had an earlier nine-year prison term in 1980 for burglary but was paroled after three years. He had another prison stint for burglary, plus arrests and jail time in Wood County for burglary, public intoxication, assault and theft.
He was convicted of Harris' murder in 1986 and sentenced to death but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals five years later overturned the conviction, finding a potential juror was dismissed improperly. At his retrial in 1995, he pleaded guilty. Lawyers argued for life in prison. Prosecutors sought death and jurors agreed with them.
At least six other Texas death row inmates have execution dates in the coming months, including Terry Hankins, 34, scheduled to die June 2 for a shooting rampage eight years ago in Tarrant County that left his two stepchildren dead. The children's mother also was gunned down.
