HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - Condemned murderer Jonathan Green faced lethal injection Wednesday evening for the abduction, rape and strangling of a 12-year-old girl near Houston 10 years ago.
Green, 42, would be the 14th convicted killer executed this year in Texas and the first of two on consecutive nights in the nation's most active death chamber.
A Montgomery County jury sent Green to death row for the June 2000 slaying of Christina LeAnn Neal, who lived across the road from Green in Dobbin, west of Conroe and about 50 miles northwest of Houston. She'd been reported missing after not returning home from a friend's house nearby.
Green was arrested a month later when police cadaver dogs led authorities to her body in his ramshackle home.
Green's lawyers were in state and federal courts trying to block the punishment, contending he was delusional and too mentally ill to be executed.
"We're hopeful," attorney James Rytting said.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held mental illness does not disqualify someone from execution as long as the prisoner understands the punishment he is facing and why he is being punished.
Bill Delmore, an assistant district attorney in Montgomery County, said Green several weeks ago wrote the county prosecutor's office "expressing concerns about the fairness of his trial." In the letter, Green pointed out he and Brett Ligon, the elected district attorney, had played football together in high school.
"It seemed inconsistent with the claims" of mental illness, Delmore said.
Green declined to speak with reporters as his execution date approached.
Laura Neal, whose daughter was killed, this week told The Courier, Montgomery County's daily newspaper, she was trying to be optimistic about a trip to Huntsville for the execution.
"And that'll be the end of it," she said.
Green first came to attention of police investigating the girl's disappearance when his wallet was found in some woods near clothing and jewelry that belonged to her, but authorities found nothing of significance on his property across the highway from where Neal lived.
A month later, a neighbor reported an unusually large trash fire at the laborer's rural home where he lived alone. Police arrived to find what they thought was a shallow grave and Green ordered them off his property. When investigators returned with a warrant, a police cadaver dog pulled detectives inside the house where Neal's remains were found wrapped in a blanket and stuffed into a laundry bag wedged into a corner behind some furniture.
Prosecutors said evidence showed he unsuccessfully had tried to burn the girl's body. DNA recovered from her remains connected Green to her slaying. A carpet fiber detected on the girl's panties found in the woods was tied to a carpet at Green's home.
At his punishment hearing, two women testified that Green had raped them. There also was evidence that linked him to the use of pruning shears to fatally stab a pony stolen from a neighbor.
Mike Griffin, a former district attorney who prosecuted Green for Neal's slaying, said authorities looked into questions about Green's mental competence before he was tried in 2002 for capital murder.
"He was dirt poor, but from what we could ascertain, competent," Griffin said.
On Thursday, another man condemned for a Montgomery County slaying, Michael Perry, 28, was set to die.
Perry was convicted in the October 2001 slaying of Sandra Stotler, 50, a nurse who was fatally shot during a burglary at her home near Lake Conroe. Perry also was a suspect but never charged in the slayings of Stotler's 16-year-old son, Adam, and an 18-year-old friend, Jeremy Richardson.
Perry confessed to the woman's slaying but said the statement was forced from him by authorities. He insists he is innocent.
At least three other Texas death row inmates have execution dates in the coming months.
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Online:
Texas Department of Criminal Justice execution schedule(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
