A Hispanic man convicted of fatally shooting a Dallas police officer nearly 16 years ago will face execution on Wednesday.
Wesley Ruiz, 43, will receive a lethal injection for the March 2007 murder of Dallas Police Senior Corporal Mark Nix.
Ruiz had led officers on a high-speed chase after he was seen driving a car matching the description of one used by a murder suspect.
Authorities said Nix tried to break the vehicle’s passenger window after the chase ended and Ruiz fired a shot. The bullet struck Nix’s plate, splintering it and sending fragments severing an artery in his neck. Nix later died at a hospital.
The 33-year-old officer was a US Navy veteran of Operation Desert Storm. He had been on the Dallas force for nearly seven years and was engaged to be married when he was killed.
Less than two hours before Ruiz’s scheduled execution on Wednesday night at Huntsville State Penitentiary, the US Supreme Court rejected an appeal by his lawyers, the AP reported.
Ruiz’s lawyers had asked the court to stop the execution, arguing that jurors relied on “blatant anti-Hispanic stereotypes” and “openly racist” in assessing whether Ruiz would be a future danger, a necessary element to secure a death sentence. in Texas. Ruiz is Hispanic.
In court papers filed Tuesday night with the Supreme Court, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said Ruiz’s claim of jury bias has no merit because a review of the allegations conducted last week by the Texas district attorney Dallas County John Creuzot found no such bias.
One of the jurors accused of bias by Ruiz’s lawyers told Creuzot that “I was not and am not partial to anyone or any race,” according to court records obtained by the agency.
Last week, US District Judge David Godbey in Dallas rejected a request to stay Ruiz’s execution, saying his lawyers failed to show that jurors made statements during the trial that showed “overt racial bias.”
Ruiz will be the second inmate to be executed this year in Texas and the fourth in the United States. There are seven more executions scheduled in Texas for the end of this year, including one next week.
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