Today, July 1, 2010 Texas executed Michael Perry. He was the 461st person executed in Texas since 1982 and the 222nd person since Rick Perry became governor. He was the 14th person executed in Texas in 2010.
Convicted killer Michael James Perry was executed Thursday evening for gunning down a nurse at her home north of Houston nine years ago and stealing her car.Perry, 28, mouthed to relatives and friends watching through a window that he loved them.“I want to start off to everyone involved in this atrocity, they’re all forgiven by me,” he said in a brief statement from the death chamber gurney.He lifted his head from the pillow and his voice cracking, cried out: “Mom, I love you.”“I’m coming home Dad. I’m coming home,” he added. His father died last month.He never acknowledged relatives of his victim who looked through an adjacent window.As the drugs took effect, his eyes fluttered and he hiccupped four times. A single tear ran down his right cheek, prompting quiet sobs from his mother and an aunt and friends. The victim’s relatives gasped and motioned to each other.Nine minutes later, at 6:17 p.m., he was pronounced dead, making him the 14th prisoner executed this year in Texas, the nation’s most active death penalty state.