Killer Is Put to Death In Texas After Court
Turns Down Appeal
The New York Times
July 19, 1990
A 33-year-old man with a criminal
record that began when he was 12 was executed by injection early today
for a 1980 murder.
The prisoner, Mikel Derrick, was pronounced dead at
12:17 A.M., six minutes after the injection at the Walls Unit of the
state prison here. He was executed for killing Edward Sonnier, 32, of
Houston on Oct. 10, 1980; Mr. Sonnier was stabbed 19 times.
The execution was the 37th in Texas since the state
resumed capital punishment in 1982. It was the 134th in the nation
since the Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions in 1976.
On Monday, the United States Circuit Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, rejected Mr. Derrick's
request for a stay. He argued that he had not received adequate
defense assistance at his trial, but the court noted that he had
confessed to the slaying orally and in writing.
On Tuesday the Supreme Court refused, 5 to 4, to
halt the execution. Voting to grant the stay were Justices William J.
Brennan Jr., Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens and Harry A.
Blackmun; opposed were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices
Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Byron R.
White.
While Mr. Derrick was serving four 10-year terms on
an unrelated robbery conviction, he wrote to the Harris County
District Attorney's office saying he had killed Mr. Sonnier, stolen
his car and stripped it for parts. He said he wrote the letter because
he was worried that his brother was about to be charged with a crime
related to the killing.
Mr. Derrick said at his trial in 1982 that the
killing had been provoked by a homosexual advance.
But Kay Burkhalter, an assistant district attorney
for Harris County who prosecuted Mr. Derrick, said Mr. Derrick ''was a
prostitute and would lure men to his apartment, kill them and take
their property.''
In a recent interview, Mr. Derrick said his
troubles with the law began at age 12 when he served time in a
juvenile detention center for petty theft. He was later convicted of
auto theft in Beaumont, Tex., and placed on four years' probation. He
also had a prostitution conviction in New York.
