State wants to execute 61-year-old Garcia White, accused of five murders – Houston Public Media

The state on Tuesday will execute 61-year-old Garcia White, a Houston man who confessed to murdering five people in six years.

White confessed to stabbing and killing Bonita Edwards and her two twin daughters about six years after their bodies were discovered in their home by an apartment manager.

According to court documents, White claimed he and another man, Terrence Moore, went to their home to do drugs and have sex with Bonita. There were no signs of forced entry and White stabbed the woman after an argument broke out. He then stabbed Bonita’s two daughters, Annette and Bernette.

But investigators determined that Moore had been killed four months before the deaths of Bonita Edwards and her daughters, and White confessed to the murders years later, court documents show.

According to court documents, he was convicted of murder in 1996 and was sentenced to death by the state for the first time. However, this year evidence emerged linking the man to the murder of Hai Pham in 1995 and the murder of Greta Williams in 1989.

He filed five motions for a stay throughout the trial. He was granted a temporary stay of execution in 2015.

Lawyers representing White filed an appeal with the Supreme Court on September 27, arguing that the man was mentally disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty.

The evidence of his disability became available after the state district court signed a warrant, but the Court of Criminal Appeals “rejected this claim without an evidentiary hearing,” attorneys wrote in the appeal.

The state then argued that White’s stay of execution should be rejected immediately.

“White’s last-minute attempt to make new, baseless claims that could and should have been made long ago is clearly a dithering attempt to delay his judgment,” state officials wrote in a letter to the Supreme Court.

The state argued that White did not provide substantial evidence of his intellectual disability.

“White presents no reason to further delay his execution date,” the state said. “The Edwards family – and the victims of the other murders of White, Greta Williams and Hai Pham – deserve justice for his decades-old crimes.”

“White’s petition is not worthy of this court’s attention and he does not demonstrate that the underlying claims have any prospect of success,” the state said.

White will be executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit on Tuesday unless a reprieve is granted.