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death penalty news—-TEXAS

Feb. 3

TEXAS—-impending execution

Condemned prisoner wants no appeals, set to die

Condemned killer David Martinez insists he's not giving up but just wants
to move on with the death sentence a San Antonio jury gave him.

"They convicted me," Martinez, 36, said recently from a tiny visiting cage
outside death row as his Wednesday evening execution approached. "That's
the end of it."

Martinez would be the 6th inmate executed already this year in the most
active death penalty state in the U.S. 2 more are scheduled for lethal
injection in Texas next week.

Martinez has been on death row since he was convicted more than 13 years
ago of using a baseball bat to fatally beat his live-in girlfriend and her
teenage son at the woman's San Antonio home.

A federal appeals court nearly a year ago turned down an appeal of his
conviction. Last summer, a federal judge ruled he was competent to waive
his appeals, as he requested. No new court actions have been filed and
none was expected.

"I'm not asking for clemency, I'm not asking for squat," he said.
"February 4, that's it. I'm not going to appeal nothing."

Martinez was on parole after serving 5 months of a 5-year sentence for
attempted sexual assault when he was arrested for the July 1994 slayings
of Carolina Prado, 37, and her son, Erik, 14. At the time of his arrest at
his grandmother's home in San Marcos, where he fled after the killings,
he'd also been sought for 9 months as a parole violator for refusing to
report to his parole officer.

Prado's younger daughter, who was 10 at the time of the slayings,
testified against Martinez, telling a Bexar County jury she saw him bash
her brother's head.

The girl, awakened by the sound of the bat, was told to be quiet or she
would get the same treatment. She was tied up, then freed herself after
Martinez left the house and walked to her grandmother's house nearby. The
woman found her grandson's body, then called police who discovered Prado's
body.

Martinez told officers who arrested him that he "killed them just like
cockroaches." In a statement to police, he said the slayings occurred
after he drank a 12-pack of beer and a large bottle of rum. He later
testified at his trial, however, that police coerced him into making a
confession and denied any role in their deaths.

(source: Associated Press)