Execution Report: Ricky Blackmon

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A Shelby County jury convicted Blackmon of capital murder and sentenced him to death. Rogers was convicted of murder and given a life sentence. She was still incarcerated at the time of Blackmon's execution, but records show that she has since been released.

"I put myself here," Blackmon said in an interview from death row. "I, Ricky Blackmon, put myself on death row. I could have avoided it, but I was too much into the 'self' syndrome ... I was more interested in myself."

"I went to work on that boy and didn't know what I was doing," he said of the killing.

The son of a preacher, Blackmon said he spurned his father's teachings until he arrived on death row and found God. He said he was looking forward to death.

"I'm happy, honestly happy," he said. "God has said to me, 'Ricky, this is your ticket home.' And I'm going home."

Before his execution, Blackmon asked his victim's mother to meet with him for a mediation session. Thomasine Crow said that Blackmon apologized to her for murdering her son several times during the six-hour session, and that she did accept his apology.

"I do not have a choice," she said. "I had to. Nothing is going to bring my son back. I can hate Ricky Blackmon and be miserable and bitter the rest of my life, or I can accept the apology and learn to be happy with that and go on, and that is what I choose to do."

Crow said that the session allowed her to truly begin to heal. "It told me that he's hurting," Crow said. "I learned that he loved his mother very much. He admitted to me that he deserved to die and that he is looking forward to it."

Prior to his execution, Blackmon released a written statement that asked people to look at the web site of the Southside Church of Christ in Huntsville. On that site was a sermon written by Blackmon.

"Wild women, drugs, and fast living was the road I took and look where it got me," Blackmon wrote. "Don't think it cannot happen to you, for if you can find yourself on any of these roads, you will sooner or later run into a situation that may hurt not only you, but your loved ones as well."

Blackmon declined to make a last statement at his execution, which Crow attended along with Rinkle's father and some other family members. He was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m.

By David Carson. Posted on 25 February 2016.
Sources: Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Associated Press, Huntsville Item.