Lubbock killer's execution set for today

I would like to see public hanging brought back, of course I am a bit morbid. This one gets his just due.

HUNTSVILLE — At a tight-knit apartment complex community in Lubbock, 67-year-old Mary Felder — “Miss Mary” to the residents — was everybody’s grandmother, known for candy and cookies and other goodies available to the neighborhood kids.

“She was such a wonderful woman,” said Ken Hawk, a former Lubbock district attorney.

That made it all the more shocking nearly a dozen years ago when her grandson, who routinely would check on Felder at her place at the Four Seasons Apartments, found her viciously beaten and stabbed to death.

Michael Rosales, who had been staying with friends in an apartment next door, was convicted of her death and was set for lethal injection this evening.

Rosales, 35, would be the 13th inmate executed this year in the nation’s busiest capital punishment state.

Attorneys from the Texas Defender Service, a legal group involved in death penalty issues, lost a bid Tuesday in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the punishment. Their appeal argued Rosales was entitled to a qualified lawyer who should have at least six months to draw up a state clemency petition and further pursue claims Rosales may be mentally retarded and ineligible for execution.

This month, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling in a Tennessee case, said the government should pay for federally appointed lawyers to work on state clemency requests for condemned inmates.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office had opposed Rosales’ appeal, arguing he’d already missed a state deadline for filing a clemency petition and allowing him to do so now would circumvent state procedures and open the door for every condemned inmate to file a last-minute clemency request after the deadline had passed. They also pointed out Rosales’ mental retardation claims previously were rejected by the courts.

The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit, acting on claims Rosales was mentally retarded, stopped Rosales’ scheduled execution in 2004.

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