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

AP Photo/Pat Sullivan

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

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 asserted that 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 ensued. He then stabbed Bonita’s two daughters, Annette and Bernette, to death.

But investigators determined Moore had been killed four months prior to the deaths of Bonita Edwards and her daughters, and White confessed to the slayings years later, according to court documents.

He was convicted of capital murder and first sentenced to be put to death by the state in 1996, according to court documents. But evidence arose that year tying the man to the 1995 killing of Hai Pham and the 1989 killing of Greta Williams.

He filed five applications for stay throughout the trials. In 2015, he was granted a temporary stay of execution.

Attorneys representing White appealed to the Supreme Court Sept. 27, asserting the man is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty.

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

The state in response argued White’s stay of execution should be promptly denied.

“White’s last-minute attempt to raise new, meritless claims that could and should have been raised long ago is plainly a dilatory effort to delay his sentence,” state officials wrote in a letter addressing the supreme court.

The state argued that White has not presented substantial evidence of his intellectual disability.

“White presents no reason to delay his execution date any longer,” according to the state. “The Edwards family—and the victims of White’s other murders, Greta Williams and Hai Pham—deserve justice for his decades-old crimes.”

“White’s petition is unworthy of this Court’s attention, and he fails to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the underlying claims,” according to the state.

White will be executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit Tuesday if a stay is not granted.