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Mar 9, 2009 2:13 pm US/Central
Fort Worth Man Set To Die For Double Murder
HUNTSVILLE (AP) ―
James Edward Martinez had some unusual reading habits.
Inside a Tarrant County storage bin he rented, along with more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition and bomb-making components, police found books on silent killing techniques and human anatomy weaknesses. One book was titled: "Be Your Own Undertaker: How to Dispose of a Dead Body."
On Tuesday evening, Martinez, 34, was set to die for a double slaying more than eight years ago that was anything but silent. Authorities found 27 shell casings from a high-powered rifle at the scene where his former girlfriend and a male friend were gunned down outside a Fort Worth apartment complex.
Sandra Walton, 29, was shot at least nine times. Michael Humphreys, 19, was hit eight times.
"Just a tremendous slaughter," recalled Alan Levy, a Tarrant County district attorney who prosecuted Martinez. "It was a massacre."
Martinez would be the 11th condemned Texas prisoner executed this year and the first of two scheduled for lethal injection on consecutive nights this week.
Attorneys for the former laborer and welder were in the courts trying to block the punishment. In an appeal, lawyers argued they had newly discovered evidence from a woman who was 15 at the time of the shootings and said Martinez was with her the night of the murders.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the petition.
"The CCA said it was not good enough evidence to postpone the execution," said Martinez's lawyer, David Richards.
He took the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We're trying everything we can to get it postponed," he said.
Martinez declined to speak with reporters as his execution date neared.
At his trial, he insisted a friend was responsible for the slaying and had access to the murder weapon, an exotic Austrian-made assault rifle.
Evidence showed Martinez briefly had dated Walton, who worked at an Arlington pool hall, loaned her $1,000, and after they broke up demanded his money back. She left him a promissory note. Then, according to court documents, he harassed and stalked her and threatened her repeatedly when she failed to quickly repay him.
Humphreys, from Arlington, frequented the billiards place where Walton worked.
Court records show Martinez pounded on the door of Walton's apartment shortly before the shooting and threatened to break it down if she didn't open it. She and Humphreys, who was visiting, went on a fast-food run in the early morning hours of Sept. 21, 2000.
When they returned, witnesses saw a man dressed in black, carrying an assault rifle and running from where gunfire had erupted. Walton was found dead inside her car. Humphreys was found dead about 10 feet away on the lawn of the apartment.
Police became interested in Martinez after Walton's friends and relatives told detectives about how he had been stalking her. He was questioned but not immediately arrested.
Authorities examining his cell phone records traced calls to a ranch in Parker County, where friends told investigators about a black bag he'd asked to be buried. Among items retrieved from the bag were the murder weapon, black clothing and a pipe bomb.
"He always claimed he didn't do it, but of course there was plenty of physical evidence," Levy said. "He had books on stalking and that kind of stuff. It was pretty compelling evidence."
A Tarrant County jury in 2001 deliberated about three hours before convicting him of capital murder.
"We thought there was a real issue as to whether or not the state proved James Martinez was the person who killed those two people," Reagan Wynn, one of Martinez's defense lawyers, said last week. "I have real reservations about whether we should be imposing the death penalty on him."
At the punishment phase of his trial, prosecutors told jurors of his collection of pistols, illegal knives, illegally modified shotguns, several rifles and bomb-making components.
"This wasn't like he had just one weapon," Levy said. "He had an armory of stuff."
Wynn described him as a "gun enthusiast."
Jurors deliberated another three hours before deciding Martinez should be put to death.
Humphreys' grandfather, 65-year-old Wilton Humphreys, was murdered in 1988 by a man posing as a potential buyer of a truck the elder Humphreys was selling. Brad Humphreys watched as Jeffery Tucker, 41, was executed in 2001 for his father's slaying. Now, he's prepared to return to Huntsville to see the killer of his son die.
"I want him to see my son's face in mine," Brad Humphreys told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "Just like Jeffery Eugene Tucker saw my dad's face in me."
In another twist, Martinez's mother also is a convicted killer. She was convicted in 1984 and given 10 years probation for the fatal shooting of her ex-husband and his fiancee.
On Wednesday night, another death row inmate, Luis Salazar, was set to die for fatally stabbing Martha Sanchez, 28, after crawling through the window of the woman's San Antonio home in October 1997.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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