Execution Report: Jose Santellan

Jose Santellan Sr., 40, was executed by lethal injection on 10 April in Huntsville, Texas for murdering his former girlfriend.

In August 1993, Yolanda Garza, 31, and Norma Hoffman were leaving their jobs at a hospital. They walked together partway through the parking lot, then parted. As Garza walked towards her car, she was approached by her former boyfriend, Jose Santellan, then 31. Santellan diverted Garza's path away from her car, and they walked about 20 feet in a different direction. After the two argued, Santellan pulled out a .25-caliber pistol and shot Garza four times in the head and chest. He then pulled his car up next to her and put her on the passenger's seat. After grabbing her backpack, he drove away.

After he fled the scene, Santellan committed an armed robbery. He finally stopped after driving about 80 miles and checked into a motel. He carried Garza's lifeless body inside and engaged in sexual acts with it over the next two days. He poured perfume on the body to alleviate the growing stench of decomposition, and dressed the body in his underwear. He also wrote letters to several family members, asking their forgiveness for the murder. Following up on a tip that Santellan's car had been spotted at the motel, police found him in the motel room with Garza's body. He confessed.

At the trial, Norma Hoffman testified that she saw Santellan and Garza talking from a distance of about 70 feet. She heard Garza scream, "Think of my kids!" She then saw Santellan standing over Garza's body with his pistol drawn. Hoffman said she heard two shots, but there may have been more. After witnessing the crime, Hoffman said she drove off to get help. Another eyewitness saw Garza lying bleeding and motionless in the parking lot. She went inside the hospital to get help. After she came back out, she saw Santellan loading her into his car.

Neither forensic evidence, the eyewitnesses, nor Santellan himself could state with certainty whether or not Garza was dead at the time he put her into his car.

Santellan said, "Yolanda became abusive, my mind went blank, I pulled out a handgun with a full clip." He said that he took her to the motel because he "just wanted to get away and be with her and spend some time together."

Garza and Santellan had ended their relationship a month earlier. Garza had already written a letter of resignation to the hospital, indicating that she planned to move due to a "domestic problem endangering my welfare and possibly that of my children."

Santellan had a long criminal history involving burglary, criminal trespass, assault, shoplifting, breaking and entering, carrying a concealed weapon, malicious destruction of police property, and attempted escape from jail. He was imprisoned twice and received early release both times. (At the time, early release was common in Texas due to strict prison population caps imposed by U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice.) He also was in jail numerous times, and spent time in prison in Michigan.

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