If you can not see the video below of the Houston protest of the 200th execution under Gov. Rick Perry, you can click here to watch it on YouTube.
Terry Lee Hankins was condemned for the 2001 shooting deaths of his two stepchildren at their home in Mansfield. The victims were 12-year-old Devin Galley and 11-year-old Ashley Mason.
Hankins, in his final statement, said: “I am sorry for what I’ve done and for all the pain and suffering my actions caused.” His voice wavered as he said: “Jesus is Lord. All glory to God.”
Hankins surrendered at his girlfriend’s Arlington apartment after a standoff with police who wanted him for gunning down his estranged wife, Tammy, and her two children.
Hankins then told officers he’d also killed his father and half-sister almost a year earlier. Hankins was the 16th condemned prisoner executed this year in Texas.
He was the 200th inmate put to death under Governor Rick Perry. And that milestone brought out anti-death-penalty protestors in downtown Houston.
Gloria Rubac, of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, admits Hankins’s confessed crimes make him a poor poster child for her cause.
“His case is horrible,” said Rubac, “but he should not be executed. We have enough prisons to lock that man up forever and I sure don’t want him in my neighborhood.”
Rubac believes death penalty opponents are making headway, even in Texas, which executes more inmates than any other state. She points out Harris County hasn’t sent a criminal to Death Row since December 2007, even though it’s the county that has historically condemned more defendants than any other in the state.
