Texas is set to carry out the year’s first execution, as a convicted killer in Fort Worth is set to die Wednesday.
Lawyers for Christopher Wilkins, 48, hope the U.S. Supreme Court calls off the execution of the death-row inmate, who was convicted of killing two men for mocking him after he fell for a $20 fake drug deal, according to The Associated Press.
Wilkins’ lawyers said their client lacked the proper legal assistance at the time of his trial, and they’re now waiting to hear the latest on a pending appeal on the same day of the scheduled execution, according to the AP.
In the appeal, attorneys are blaming the courts for not authorizing money for appeals.
“He has never had a meaningful opportunity at any stage to develop that claim, to have any court address it on the merits, or even to have it considered as part of a petition for executive clemency,” Attorney Seth Waxman said in the appeal, according to the New York Daily News.
Wilkins took the stand before jurors in his trial in 2008 and explained why he killed the two Fort Worth men in 2005.
“Look, it is no big deal,” Wilkins said during the trial, according to the New York Daily News.
“When I get wound up, I have a fuse that is short,” he said. “I don’t think about what I am doing.”
“I know they are bad decisions,” Wilkins added. “I make them anyway.”
Kevin Rousseau, a Tarrant County assistant district attorney, said Wilkins is “a professional criminal. Very violent. He used violence as a means of achieve his means on a routine basis,” the New York Daily News noted.
The 2005 incident wasn’t Wilkins’ first run-in with the law.
According to the New York Daily News, prior to the 2005 incident, Wilkins had been arrested and charged for gun possession.
During his murder trial, Wilkins testified about a completely separate incident, telling the court that he had previously shot dead a man outside of a bar after a confrontation about a pay phone, according to Fox News.
He also told jurors that he had once tried running down two people that he believed had stolen a pair of sunglasses that he owned.
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