Texas Execution Information Center

Execution Report: Craig Ogan

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A jury convicted Ogan of capital murder in June 1990 and sentenced him to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence in April 1993. All of his subsequent appeals in state and federal court were denied.

In his appeals, Ogan's attorneys claimed that their client suffered from a mental illness and that his trial counsel was incompetent for failing to use that in his defense. Ogan, who had an IQ of 140, had attended college, and spoke several languages, told a reporter, "They're trying to sell me as a nut case. I don't appreciate that."

Ogan had a longstanding interest in espionage and had ambitions of joining the Central Intelligence Agency. In one of his letters from death row, he claimed that he had an appointment for an interview with the CIA the day he killed Officer Boswell. His career as a spy, however, never took off. At his trial, DEA agents testified that they considered Ogan to be, though a "marginally successful" informant, mostly a comical figure who ducked behind newspapers whenever a stranger entered their office. They derisively called him "special agent double-oh-five" behind his back. They also criticized him for getting involved in a drug deal without their permission, then calling for their assistance when it got him into trouble.

From death row, Ogan wrote letters that were posted on an anti-death-penalty web site. In one of them, he claimed that his execution represented the "premeditated mass murder" of possibly thousands of his potential descendants. He also provided his version of the conversation between himself and Officer Boswell. In Ogan's account, he was extremely polite, courteous to a fault, and non-confrontational. Boswell and Gainer, on the other hand, were hostile to him without provocation and called him a "[expletive] DEA snitch." Ogan wrote that when he told Boswell, "All right, sir; I was only asking for help," Boswell then threw his door open and burst out of the car "in an insane rage, running/lunging furiously right at me, like a football tackle gone berserk, and clawing frantically at his gun/holster."

An anti-death-penalty spokesman who visited Ogan on death row described him as "extremely tense."

Ogan's execution was delayed for nearly an hour as the Supreme Court considered late appeals questioning his mental competence.

"I would like to say first of all the real violent crimes in this case are acts committed by James Boswell and Clay Morgan Gaines," Ogan said in his lengthy last statement. "I am not guilty; I acted in self-defense and reflex in the face of a police officer who was out of control," he said. Ogan referred to a head injury Boswell had suffered and suggested that he had mental problems. He described Boswell as "filled with anger" and "mad at the world." The lethal injection was given while Ogan was two minutes into his last statement. At 7:05 p.m., he was still talking about Boswell when he paused briefly to collect his thoughts. The lethal drugs took effect as Ogan then snorted, gasped, and lost consciousness. He was pronounced dead at 7:13 p.m.

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By David Carson. Posted on 20 November 2002. Revised on 5 December 2002.
Sources: Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Texas Attorney General's office, U.S. Fifth Circuit Court documents, Associated Press, Houston Chronicle, letters from Craig Ogan.

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