Texas Executes Salazar; Two More Executions Set for Next Week

Right up until the moment he was executed, Robert Salazar Jr. insisted that he was not responsible for the death of his girlfriend’s 2-year-old daughter. Salazar, who was 18 at the time of the crime, claimed that Adriana Gomez was accidentally injured after he pushed her because she wouldn’t stop crying when he was babysitting her. Salazar had been dating Adriana’s mother, Raylene Blakeburn, for several years, and took care of the toddler while her mother worked. Authorities said that Blakeburn told them Salazar had abused Adriana several times prior to killing her.

Authorities say that on that April night in 1997, Salazar beat the girl in a violent rage, inflicting at least three life-threatening injuries—a blow to her head that left her skull feeling like gelatin, damage to her chest that almost ruptured her heart, and a blow to her abdomen that shoved her internal organs against her backbone. After beating her, Salazar left the child in her crib and went to his mother’s house to drink beer with a friend. When Adriana’s mother returned home and discovered her daughter, she rushed her to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.

The medical examiner said that the child’s injuries were worse than those of most victims of automobile accidents. "This is one of those few cases that came down the pike that justice would not be satisfied unless he paid an ultimate price for this," said Rusty Ladd, one of the prosecutors from the Lubbock County District Attorney’s Office. Ladd, now a judge in Lubbock, said that jurors were swayed by the brutal nature of the crime. Salazar’s attorney, Michael Charlton, attempted to stop the execution by claiming that Salazar was mentally retarded. Although Philip Wischkaemper, Salazar’s attorney during his 1999 trial, said that mental retardation explained his Salazar’s lack of remorse for his crime, the issue of mental retardation was not brought up during his trial. Both the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned down requests to stop the execution on those grounds.

Salazar was the sixth prisoner on death row to be executed this year in Texas. He was the second of four scheduled for this month. Raymond Martinez, convicted of killing a Houston bar owner in 1983 during a robbery, is scheduled to die next Tuesday. Kevin Kincy, condemned for the 1993 murder of a Houston man while planning to rob his home, is scheduled for execution on Wednesday.