Texas man executed in 1989 for stabbing teenage twins

HOUSTON – A Texas man convicted of fatal knife attacks on 16-year-old twin girls more than three decades ago was executed Tuesday night.

Garcia Glenn White was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m. CDT after being given a chemical injection at the state prison in Huntsville. He was convicted of the murders of Annette and Bernette Edwards in December 1989. The bodies of the twin girls and their mother, Bonita Edwards, were found in their Houston apartment.

White, 61, was the sixth inmate to be executed in the United States in the past 11 days. His execution came shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected three final appeals without comment.

When asked by a supervisor if he had made a statement, White’s final words were to repeatedly apologize to the witnesses who were watching.

“I would like to apologize for all the wrongs I have done and for the pain I have caused,” he said from the death chamber just before the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began to flow into his arms.

He said he accepted responsibility for the killings, regretted his actions and prayed for prison officials, civil servants and “for my brothers and sisters behind these walls.”

With a loud and powerful voice he began to sing a hymn: “I trust in God” and sang several verses with the refrain: “I trust in God, my Savior of the world, the one who never failed.” Then he called for family and urged friends to “just keep moving forward and keep loving each other” and concluded by thanking prison officers and officials “for treating us like human beings.”

As the medication began to take effect, he exhaled gently several times and then began making noises like snoring, some of them loud. He burped, snored once and swallowed. He was pronounced dead seventeen minutes later.

According to testimony, White went to the girls’ home in Houston to smoke crack with their mother, Bonita, who was also fatally stabbed. When the girls came out of their room to see what had happened, White attacked them. There was evidence that White had broken open the locked door to the girls’ bedroom. Authorities later said he was linked to the deaths of a convenience store owner and another woman.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who witnessed White’s death, lamented that it took about 30 years to implement the jury’s death sentence as several appeals in White’s case went to trial.

“The suffering of the survivors (of the victims) is simply unspeakable,” she said. “At least it’s over.”

White’s lawyers had unsuccessfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution after lower courts previously rejected requests for a stay. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Friday rejected White’s request to commute his death sentence to a lesser sentence or to grant him a 30-day reprieve.

His lawyers argued that the Texas Supreme Court of Criminal Appeals had refused to accept “medical evidence and strong factual evidence” showing that White was mentally disabled.

The Supreme Court banned the execution of mentally disabled people in 2002. However, it has given states some discretion in deciding how to determine such disabilities. Justices have wrestled with the question of how much discretion they should allow.

White’s lawyers also accused the Texas appeals court of not allowing his defense team to present evidence that could spare him a death sentence, including DNA evidence that another man was also at the crime scene and scientific evidence that would show that White “probably suffered from an illness.” Cocaine caused a psychotic break during his actions.”

White’s lawyers also argued that he is entitled to a reconsideration of his death sentence. They claimed the Texas Court of Appeals had created a new system for sentencing in death penalty cases following a recent Supreme Court ruling in another death row case in Texas.

Patrick McCann, one of White’s lawyers, said Tuesday that his client had spent his entire time in prison “working on becoming a better person.”

The deaths of the twin girls and their mother remained unsolved for about six years until White confessed to the murders after he was arrested in connection with the July 1995 death of grocery store owner Hai Van Pham, who was fatally beaten during a robbery at his store. Police said White also confessed to fatally beating another woman, Greta Williams, in 1989.

By Juan A. Lozono for The Associated Press