WASHINGTON: A former US cop convicted of hiring a hitman to kill his wife almost 30 years ago was executed on Tuesday after a last-minute legal battle, Texas officials said.
Robert Fratta, 65, had been scheduled to be put to death on Tuesday evening, but the ruling by a Texas judge threw the planned lethal injection into doubt for several hours.
District Judge Catherine Mauzy ruled after an emergency hearing Tuesday morning that officials could not use the intended drug as it was “probably illegal to possess or administer because it is more likely than not expired.”
The ex-cop as well as multiple other death row inmates had filed the last-minute appeal, arguing that using expired pentobarbital was a cruel punishment and should therefore be blocked under the US Constitution.
However, the southern state’s Court of Criminal Appeals had previously placed limits on Judges halting executions, and on Tuesday it overturned Mauzy’s ruling. The Texas Supreme Court did not intervene, allowing the lethal injection to be administered.
The state’s Department of Criminal Justice said in a statement on Tuesday night that Fratta had been pronounced dead at 7:49 pm and he did not make any final remarks.
Fratta had been behind bars since 1994, when, according to prosecutors, he recruited an acquaintance who hired a contract killer to get Farah Fratta, who was 33-year-old then, killed.
The couple were in the middle of a bitter divorce and fighting over custody of their three children, according to legal documents.
Robert Fratta asked many of his friends and acquaintances to kill his wife or to recommend someone to do so, court documents say. Most of his friends were initially of the view that “he was joking or blowing off steam,” but some of them came to believe that he was serious “as he continued to talk about it over time.”
Frata paid $1,000 to hitman
Fratta enlisted someone from his gym who then hired a contract killer, whom Fratta paid $1,000 for his wife’s murder, as per US media.
The former police officer was first sentenced to death in 1996, but the ruling was overturned in 2007 over a technicality. He was resentenced to be executed in a second trial in 2009.
Fratta’s lawyers filed multiple unsuccessful appeals, including to the US Supreme Court, to halt his execution, alleging that a witness’s testimony was obtained using hypnosis. — APP
