Execution Report: Alexander Martinez

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A jury convicted Martinez of capital murder in December 2002 and sentenced him to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence in March 2004. In August 2004, Martinez waived his remaining appeals.

"Yeah, I believe in violence," Martinez said in an interview from death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston. "I was raised up with violence. I was hit, kicked, hollered at. It destroyed my family. Even in here, I'm subject to violence. Even the state will be violent when I'm killed." Martinez also admitted that he would probably kill again if he were freed. "Maybe not now, maybe not in ten years. But someday, maybe twenty years from now, somebody would set me off."

Martinez was adopted when he was 15 months old. He said that his adoptive mother, Velma Griffin, who raised him for the next 7½ years, sexually abused him and beat him "every night until [her] hands hurt and she had to stop."

While on death row, Martinez wrote Griffin a letter, in which he stated, "I have not decided what discipline I will give you, but it will be severe ... Wherever you go, I'll find you. I pray you go straight to Hell when you die, because when I meet you there, I will torture you for eternity, just as I am condemned forever."

Griffin denied Martinez' allegations. She repeatedly attempted to visit him on death row, but he refused to see her.

When Martinez waived his appeals last August, he received a March 2005 execution date. That date was put off, however, when his lawyer filed an appeal against his wishes. "You should have heard him," attorney Pat McCann said. "He was furious."

In the interview, Martinez admitted that he killed Oliveros. "I didn't have $300," he said. "She got real mad, and we got into a fight. I stabbed her."

"I don't like what I did," Martinez said. "I'm ashamed for what I did."

On the afternoon of his execution, while he was waiting in the holding cell next to the death chamber, Martinez prepared a handwritten statement. "I have caused so much pain to so many people," he wrote. "I especially want to apologize to my victim's family for the life I took ... I am ashamed for what I've done!"

In his last statement, Martinez thanked his family and friends and expressed his love for them. He added, "and thanks for the friends at the Polunsky Unit that helped me get through this that didn't agree with my decision and still gave me their friendship." The lethal injection was started, and Martinez was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m.

By David Carson. Posted on 8 June 2005.
Sources: Texas Attorney General's office, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Associated Press, Houston Chronicle.