Jackie Wilson

Jackie Barron Wilson, 39, was executed by lethal injection on May 4, 2006 in Huntsville, Texas for the abduction, sexual assault, and murder of a 5-year-old girl.

On 30 November 1988, Toni Rhodes awoke to find that her daughter, Maggie, was missing. The window above the child's bed was raised, and the glass was broken from the outside. There was blood on the window ledge and the wall below the window. The curtains were torn and also had blood on them.

Maggie's body was found that morning in Grand Prairie, on the side of the road. She was face down, and her shorts were pulled down, exposing her buttocks. There were tire tracks on the body, with two different tread patterns. The medical examiner found that in addition to being run over, Maggie had been vaginally and anally raped while alive, then strangled and suffocated.

A woman living in the same apartment complex as the Rhodes reported that on the night Maggie was murdered, Wilson, then 22, broke into her apartment through a window and began sexually assaulting her in her sleep. When she awoke, Wilson offered her drugs in exchange for sex. She ordered Wilson to leave, and he did. When a police officer went to Wilson's residence to question him, he fled.

Investigators located the car that Wilson was driving the night of the murder. The two different kinds of tires on the car were consistent with the two tread marks on the victim's body. Hairs found inside and on the underside of the car were matched to the victim. A bite mark found on the girl's body matched an impression taken from Wilson. Fingerprints found on the pieces of glass from the broken window of Maggie's bedroom were matched to Wilson.

Wilson had a history of fleeing from police, resisting arrest, and giving false information to police, including an instance when he assaulted an officer. During his trial, Wilson asked a deputy to change the position of his handcuffs. When the deputy agreed and removed one cuff in order to change their position, Wilson jerked away and struggled with the deputy until another deputy arrived.

A jury convicted Wilson of capital murder in September 1989 and sentenced him to death. In 1993, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the guilty verdict because of an error in jury selection. Wilson was convicted by a new jury in June 1994 and sentenced to death again. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed this conviction and sentence in February 1997. All of his subsequent appeals in state and federal court were denied.

In prison, Wilson caused numerous discipline problems, and required extra-restrictive security measures. He once injured another inmate by stabbing him several times with a wooden shank.

Wilson never admitted to being Maggie's murderer, although he did not dispute the evidence against him. In his appeals, his lawyers asserted that the state did not prove that Wilson was the only participant in the crime.

"Thank you for being there for me," Wilson said to his relatives at his execution, "and all these people here will find the one who did this damn crime. I am going home to be with God." When Wilson finished his last statement, the lethal injection was started. He was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m.