Add Category
Updated
A former Dallas accountant who shot his two young daughters dead while their mother listened helplessly on the phone has been put to death in Texas.
John David Battaglia, 62, received a lethal injection for the May 2001 killings of his nine-year-old daughter, Faith, and her six-year-old sister Liberty.
Battaglia and his wife had separated and the girls were killed at his Dallas apartment during a scheduled visit.
Battaglia's execution was America's third this year, all in Texas.
The punishment was carried out after the US Supreme Court rejected appeals from his lawyers to review his case, contending the 62-year-old was delusional and mentally incompetent for execution.
His former wife, Mary Jean Pearl, witnessed the execution.
In his last statement, Battaglia was quoted by prison officials as saying: "Well, Hi Mary Jean. See y'all later. Go ahead please."
Mother heard daughters' screams as they were shot
At the time of the shooting, Ms Pearl was seeking to have Battaglia arrested for violating a protective order by threatening her.
According to court documents, shortly before Battaglia was scheduled to host his daughters for a regular dinner, a police officer informed him by phone he needed to surrender for violating his probation.
The officer asked him to turn himself in so that police would not have to take him into custody while he was with his daughters, court documents showed.
After the girls arrived at his apartment, he left a message on his wife's phone.
When she called back, he put the phone on speaker and demanded that his wife speak with daughter Faith.
The daughter then asked: "Mommy, why do you want Daddy to go to jail?" and could be heard a few seconds later saying: "No, Daddy, please don't, don't do it."
Then the mother heard gunshots and screams. Battaglia shouted an obscenity at her on the phone, the documents showed.
Ms Pearl called 911 and police found the dead girls in Battaglia's apartment. Both had been shot multiple times.
After the shooting, Battaglia went to a bar with his girlfriend and was arrested shortly afterward at a tattoo parlour where he was getting rose tattoos to remember his dead daughters, the documents showed.
Battaglia attempted to use mental competence defence
Earlier in the day, the fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal that argued a lower court improperly refused Battaglia's lawyers money to hire an expert to further examine legal claims of his mental competency.
The Supreme Court has ruled that prisoners can be executed if they are aware the death penalty is to be carried out and have a rational understanding of why they are facing that punishment.
State Judge Robert Burns, who found Battaglia competent, said his intelligence and education — he had a master's degree — showed he had the "motive and intellectual capability to maintain a deliberate ploy or ruse to avoid his execution".
AP/Reuters
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, murder-and-manslaughter, crime, community-and-society, family, family-and-children, united-states
First posted