Mexican national facing execution Wednesday evening for rancher's 1997 slaying

Source: Associated Press

Mexican national facing execution Wednesday evening for rancher's 1997 slaying
By Michael Graczyk, The Associated Press April 9, 2014 3:01 PM

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A man who escaped prison in his native Mexico while serving a murder sentence was headed to the Texas death chamber Wednesday for the fatal beating a former Baylor University history professor and attack on his wife more than 16 years ago.

Ramiro Hernandez-Llanas, 44, was in the U.S. illegally when he was arrested for the October 1997 slaying of Glen Lich. Ten days earlier, Lich, 49, had given him a job helping with renovations at his ranch near Kerrville in the Texas Hill Country in exchange for living quarters.

Hernandez-Llanas would be the sixth Texas prisoner executed this year and second in a week to receive lethal injection with a new supply of pentobarbital. Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials have refused to identify the source of the powerful sedative, contending secrecy is needed to protect the provider from threats of violence from capital punishment opponents. The U.S. Supreme Court in a related case last week backed that position.

Texas and other states that have the death penalty have been scrambling for substitute drugs or new sources for drugs for lethal injections after major drugmakers — many based in Europe with longtime opposition to the death penalty — stopped selling to prisons and corrections departments.









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