Khristian Oliver

Khristian Phillip Oliver, 32, was executed by lethal injection on 5 November 2009 in Huntsville, Texas for murdering a man while burglarizing his home.

On 17 March 1998, Oliver, then 20, his girlfriend Sonya Reed, 25^*, and brothers Bennie and Lonnie Rubalcana, 16 and 15, drove to Joe Collins' house in Nacogdoches county and knocked on the door. No one answered. Believing no one was at home, they drove down the road a short distance and parked. Oliver and Lonnie then went back to the house with bolt cutters and a .380-caliber handgun while Reed and Bennie stayed in the truck. Oliver cut the padlock on the door, and he Lonnie went inside. While they were gathering items from the house to steal, Collins, 64, returned home. The burglars tried to escape, but Collins shot Lonnie in the leg with a rifle. Oliver then shot Collins in the face with his handgun. While Bennie helped his brother back to the truck, Oliver took the rifle from Collins and hit him in the face with the butt of the weapon. Oliver continued shooting Collins while he was lying on his back on the ground.

The group took Lonnie to the hospital, then went to the sheriff's office and filed reports claiming that someone drove by and shot Lonnie while they were all at a farm. The next day, deputies picked up Bennie and questioned him. He gave a written statement admitting what had actually happened. Investigators then questioned Lonnie, who, after repeating the original story about the farm, gave a written statement that corroborated his brother's. Oliver and Reed were then arrested at a motel in Waco.

Oliver had no previous felony convictions, but at his punishment hearing, the state presented testimony from a long-time accomplice of Oliver's showing that he had committed over a dozen burglaries over the previous year and a half. When he was attempting to burglarize Waco High School, Oliver fired a gun at a security guard and a janitor. The accomplice also testified that Oliver car-jacked a man at gunpoint in October 1997.

A jury convicted Oliver of capital murder in April 1999 and sentenced him to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence in April 2002. All of his subsequent appeals in state and federal court were denied.

The biggest controversy in Oliver's case was the fact that some of the jurors at his punishment hearing consulted the Bible while deciding on his sentence. The courts ruled that, although the Bible was improperly used as an external influence in Oliver's sentencing hearing, Oliver and his attorneys failed to show that it affected the outcome of the jury's deliberations.

Sonya Fawn Reed was convicted of engaging in organized criminal activity and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Because of their age and in exchange for their testimonies, the Rubalcana brothers received lighter sentences. Lonnie Rubalcana was sentenced to ten years, and Bennie Rubalcana was sentenced to five.

Oliver's execution was attended by members of both his and his victim's families. "In know you're not going to get the closure you are looking for," he said to the Collins family. Still, he said "I wish you the best" and said he prayed for them "every day and every night". Next, he told his parents that he loved them. He then began reciting Psalm 23, which begins, "The Lord is my Shepherd..." He got most of the way through it, to "my cup runneth over", before the drugs began to take effect. He was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m.

^*Both the attorney general's office's press release and the TDCJ's web site describe Oliver's accomplices as "three juvenile co-defendants", but the Department of Public Safety gives Reed's date of birth as 31 May 1972.