Texas Execution Information Center

Execution Report: Michael Richard

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A jury convicted Richard of capital murder in September 1987 and sentenced him to death. In September 1992, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his conviction because the jury was not instructed to consider his history as an abused child as a possible mitigating factor when determining his punishment. In a new trial in June 1995, a jury again convicted Richard of capital murder and sentenced him to death. The TCCA affirmed this conviction and sentence in June 1997. All of his subsequent appeals in state and federal court were denied.

At Richard's first trial, his attorneys told the jury that he scored 62 on an IQ test. Richard's IQ and possible mental retardation were not mentioned in his second trial. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2002 that executing mentally retarded prisoners is unconstitutional, a hearing was held on Richard's mental retardation claim. A psychologist for the state, George Denkowski, reviewed Richard's IQ tests and determined him to be retarded. However, Harris Country officials succeeded in obtaining a new hearing in December 2006. Prosecutor Lynn Hardaway supplied evidence showing that Richard's activities in prison - including writing letters and playing chess - showed that he was not retarded, and that he had never been diagnosed as retarded during his childhood. Denkowski then changed his evaluation, stating that a low IQ test was not conclusive by itself.

The courts ruled that Richard's claim of mental retardation was not proven, and rejected his appeals.

Richard later denied any involvement in the killing. "I was a thief - I ain't gonna lie to you," he told an interviewer on death row the week before his execution, "because that's what I was taught by my father. But I've been trying to tell everybody I didn't break in that house or kill that woman." He said that a detective tricked him into signing a document he could not read.

Lee Coffee, the prosecutor in Richard's first trial, and who is now a judge in Memphis, Tennessee, said that Richard never denied the killing during his trial. Coffee also said that, at the Dixon family's request, he offered Richard a life sentence, but Richard rejected the plea offer.

Richard said that he accepted the plea offer, but Coffee reneged on his promise.

As for his mental retardation claim, Richard said that the state's evidence against him was misleading. He said that he had others write letters for him, then he copied them in his own handwriting, and that he merely imitated behavior he saw others doing. "There's a lot of things I can't do, but if I sit and watch you, I can learn to do a little," he said.

On the day Richard was executed, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a Kentucky case challenging the constitutionality of execution by lethal injection. Richard's lawyers asked the Supreme Court to grant a stay in his case until the Kentucky case is decided, but their request was denied a few minutes before 8:00 p.m.

At his execution, Richard expressed love to his family in a brief last statement. After the lethal injection was started, he said, "I guess this is it." He was pronounced dead at 8:23 p.m.

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By David Carson. Posted on 26 September 2007.
Sources: Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Texas Attorney General's office, Houston Chronicle.

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