Texas Man Who Received Three Stays of Execution Is Executed
Cleve Foster’s luck ran out Tuesday.
Foster, 48, who had received three stays of execution, was executed after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his fourth request for a stay, ThomsonReuters reports.
The former Army recruiter was pronounced dead at 6:43 p.m. local time at the Texas state penitentiary in Huntsville, a state criminal justice spokesman said.
Foster and his roommate, Sheldon Ward, were convicted of the 2002 rape and murder of Nyaneur “Mary” Pal, who was found naked in a creek bed, shot once in the head.
All three had been regulars at a Fort Worth bar. On the night Pal disappeared, bartenders said, she walked out of the bar with the two men. Pal left in her car; Foster and Ward followed in Foster’s truck.
Ward, who had also been sentenced to death, died of a brain tumor last year in prison. Foster claimed at his trial that Ward had acted alone.
Foster was 2½ hours away from being executed last year when the U.S. Supreme Court granted his request for a temporary stay. It was his third stay from the court, which had also delayed his execution in January and April 2011.
His fourth request for a stay was referred to the full court by Justice Antonin Scalia, but only Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed to grant it.
Foster sent his love to his family and friends in his last statement. Then he said he was “ready to go home to meet my maker.”
