Thursday, September 19, 1996

Convicted Killer's Execution Speediest Since Penalty Resumed

By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE - A convicted killer who avoided appeals on his behalf was executed Wednesday evening, only eight months after arriving on death row for the robbery-slaying of his boss in Amarillo.

The death sentence for Joe Gonzales, a 36-year-old roofer, was the speediest in Texas since the death penalty resumed in Texas 14 years ago.

Gonzales died at 6:19 p.m. - seven minutes after lethal drugs were administered in Texas' third execution this year.

Convicted last November in the 1992 shooting death of William Veader, Gonzales gasped once before he was pronounced dead, state officials said.

Gonzales had nothing to say in the death chamber, but released a brief handwritten statement read by Amarillo attorney Kent Birdsong following the execution.

"There are people all over the world who face things worse than death on a daily basis and in that sense I consider myself lucky," he said. "I cannot find the words to express the sadness I feel for bringing this hurt and pain on my loved ones.

"I will not ask forgiveness for the decisions I have made in this judicial process, only acceptance. God bless you all."

Gonzales arrived on death row Jan. 10. The previous Texas record for brevity on death row before execution was the 18 months spent by George Lott, who was given lethal injection in September 1994 for killing two attorneys at the Tarrant County Courthouse.

Like Gonzales, Lott served as his own lawyer at trial and was an execution volunteer.

Nationally, Gary Gilmore in Utah was executed in 1977 - a year after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to resume and only three months after his murder conviction.

"It's his choice and I'm a firm believer in respecting that part of it," said Birdsong, who had been appointed to assist Gonzales. "But it's been a very weird experience all the way through on this."

"I'm never comfortable thinking it's going to go through fast because nothing does in the legal system, but in this case he never changed," said Potter County District Attorney Rebecca King.

"He stated over and over again to the prosecution, in front of the court on the record, and several other times to the jury that he had taken the man's life, that he believed in what the system was, that he didn't choose to die, but he had taken someone else's life and he didn't choose to spend the rest of his life in prison."

Gonzales' execution was only the third this year in Texas, which in 1995 sent a record 19 men to the death chamber. An appeal challenging the constitutionality of a new state law designed to accelerate executions virtually had halted executions while the law was being reviewed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Unlike most other condemned inmates, however, Gonzales spurned opportunities that almost certainly would have guaranteed him a reprieve and an appeals process that in Texas is averaging some eight years.

"All I ask is that you follow the law and find me guilty of capital murder," Gonzales, who declined a prison interview, told an Amarillo jury last November. "I am a man who broke the law. I am a man who has no regard for the law. I am a man who has no regard for humanity.

"I ask for no sympathy, no empathy - but I do ask for you to follow the law."

Jurors followed his instructions, taking just 12 minutes to decide on the death penalty.

Gonzales was convicted of fatally shooting the 50-year-old Veader on Oct. 19, 1992, at Veader's Amarillo home in a robbery that Gonzales tried to cover up as a suicide. In a tape-recorded confession to police, Gonzales said Veader owed him about $200 and he went to the house "to get my money one way or the other."

Money taken during the shooting was used for drugs and car wheels, Gonzales said.