Lorenzo Morris

Lorenzo Morris, 52, was executed by lethal injection on 2 November 2004 in Huntsville, Texas for the murder of a man while robbing him in his home.

On 5 August 1990, Morris, then 39, and his girlfriend, Judy Courtney, went to the home of Courtney's neighbor, Jesse Fields, 70. A fight broke out. Morris hit Fields, stabbed him with a butcher knife, and struck him twice with a hammer. Morris took some money from Fields' house, then he and Courtney then left.

Fields's ex-wife and his granddaughter discovered him the following day. He was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. He was in a coma, having suffered severe head injuries and brain damage in the attack. Fields was treated at a hospital first, then later moved to a nursing home.

Morris was arrested in March 1991 after robbing a laundromat and shooting the clerk. He was convicted of aggravated robbery in that case and sentenced to life in prison. He was also charged with aggravated robbery in the Fields case.

In a statement to police, Morris claimed that he went to Fields' house to buy drugs. He said that he asked Fields for some free drugs and Fields refused. He then struck Fields in the face. Morris said that Fields then pulled out a knife and tried to stab him. Morris grabbed the knife from fields and stabbed him in the neck. Next, Fields ran and picked up a hammer, which Morris also took from him. Morris said that he hit Fields twice with the hammer, then ran out.

After nine months in a coma, Fields developed gangrene in the toes of one leg and had to have the leg amputated. He died the day after the amputation. The nursing home physician attributed Fields' death to natural causes, but the Harris County Medical Examiner's office ruled it to be a homicide. The charge against Morris was then changed to capital murder.

At Morris's trial, Judy Courtney testified that she saw Morris sitting on top of Fields, holding a knife in one hand and beating him with the other. Courtney said that Morris told Fields he was going to kill him, and then asked where he kept his money. Courtney testified that she did not call the police because she was afraid of what Morris would to to her if she did.

Two doctors who treated Fields at the hospital before his death testified that Fields' injuries from the beating were the root cause of his death.

Morris had a lengthy criminal record. In 1972, he was convicted of aggravated assault of a police officer. In June 1976, he was convicted of aggravated robbery and sentenced to 5 years in prison. He served 18 months of that sentence before being paroled in January 1978. In April 1982, he returned to prison with an 8-year sentence for robbery. He was paroled in December 1982 and was discharged from parole in September 1986.

A jury convicted Morris of capital murder in March 1992 and sentenced him to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence in December 1994. All of his subsequent appeals in state and federal court were denied. Morris's appeals lawyer claimed that Fields died from natural causes and poor medical care, and that Morris's trial attorney provided ineffective assistance by failing to call the nursing home physician as a witness to testify to that effect. The courts rejected this argument.

"I didn't kill him, he died of natural causes," Morris said from death row.

On the day of his execution, Morris asked his lawyer, Rob Morrow, not to make any more appeals on his behalf. "He let me know that he had made peace with the situation," Morrow said.

Morris declined to make a last statement at his execution. He was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m.