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#Post#: 551--------------------------------------------------
~ Robert Fratta, 10Jan23, (TX) ~
By: BuzzC Date: December 16, 2022, 1:35 pm
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Execution date set for former Missouri City police officer
convicted of plotting wife's murder in 1994--
Robert Fratta, 65, was convicted of hiring two men to kill his
wife amid their divorce and custody battle.
Tuesday, October 11th, 2022
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HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- An execution date has been set for
Robert Fratta, who is a former Missouri City police officer
convicted of hiring two men to kill his wife in 1994.
After spending more than 25 years on death row, Fratta is set to
be executed on Jan. 10, 2023, after a judge signed the execution
order Tuesday morning.
Fratta, 65, was sentenced to die in 1996 after being found
guilty of plotting the death of his wife, Farah, during their
divorce.
Fratta was in church when Farah was allegedly found shot to
death in the garage of her home.
The motive was said to be money and custody over their child.
The two other men involved in the plot were also sentenced to
death, but Fratta is the first to face execution.
Fratta has claimed in the past that his late wife's father
framed him.
Fratta had two different trials, first in 1995 and then in 2009,
after some of the evidence used to convict him was ruled
inadmissible, paving the way for a second trial.
In the 2009 trial, Fratta's children testified against him,
referring to him as "Bob," as they recalled the night their
mother was killed.
A verdict was reached in May 2009, and he was given the death
penalty after being found guilty of capital murder.
Fratta's attorney told ABC13 on Tuesday they plan to file
clemency and explore other avenues to defend his client.
Prosecutors said this is the type of case that the death penalty
was intended for, but Fratta's lawyer says they're not giving up
their fight.
"Mr. Fratta has 91 days from today to file any more appeals that
he wants to file. He has 91 days to ask the governor for a
pardon," Assistant District Attorney Joshua Reiss said. "I fully
anticipate that he is going to do both, and we're (going to) to
everything we can to make this execution a reality."
8)
#Post#: 556--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Robert Fratta, 10Jan23, (TX) ~
By: BuzzC Date: January 10, 2023, 9:09 pm
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UPDATE: Robert Fratta, former Missouri City police officer,
executed by lethal injection--
Tuesday, January 10th, 2023
A former suburban Houston police officer was executed Tuesday
evening for hiring two people to kill his estranged wife nearly
30 years ago amid a contentious divorce and custody battle.
Robert Fratta, 65, received a lethal injection at the state
penitentiary in Huntsville for the November 1994 fatal shooting
of his wife, Farah. He was pronounced dead at 7:49 p.m.
Prosecutors say Robert Fratta organized the murder-for-hire plot
in which a middleman, Joseph Prystash, hired the shooter, Howard
Guidry. Farah Fratta, 33, was shot twice in the head in her
home's garage in the Houston suburb of Atascocita. Robert
Fratta, who was a public safety officer for Missouri City, had
long claimed he was innocent.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined an appeal from
Fratta's lawyers to stop the execution. They had argued
prosecutors withheld evidence that a trial witness had been
hypnotized by investigators, leading her to change her initial
recollection that she saw two men at the murder scene as well as
a getaway driver.
"This would have undermined the State's case, which depended on
just two men committing the act and depended on linking Fratta
to both," Fratta's lawyers wrote in their appeal.
Prosecutors have argued the hypnosis produced no new information
and no new identification. They had also said that Fratta had
repeatedly expressed his desire to see his wife dead and asked
several acquaintances if they knew anyone who would kill her,
telling one friend, "I'll just kill her, and I'll do my time and
when I get out, I'll have my kids," according to court records.
Prystash and Guidry were also sent to death row for the slaying.
Fratta was also one of four Texas death row inmates who sued to
stop the state's prison system from using what they allege are
expired and unsafe execution drugs.
There had been some doubt if Fratta's execution would take place
after civil court Judge Catherine Mauzy in Austin earlier
Tuesday issued a temporary injunction in the lawsuit that would
have prevented the state's prison system from using what she
believed is likely expired and medically compromised
pentobarbital - the drug Texas uses in its lethal injection.
The execution was carried out after Texas' top criminal appeals
court overturned the injunction and the state's supreme court
rejected an appeal. Mauzy's order conflicted with last week's
edict from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that barred her
from issuing any orders in the lawsuit that would halt any
execution.
The Supreme Court and lower courts previously rejected appeals
from Fratta's lawyers that sought to review claims arguing
insufficient evidence and faulty jury instructions were used to
convict him. His attorneys have also unsuccessfully argued that
a juror in his case was not impartial and that ballistics
evidence didn't tie him to the murder weapon.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles last week unanimously
declined to commute Fratta's death sentence to a lesser penalty
or to grant a 60-day reprieve.
Fratta was first sentenced to death in 1996, but his conviction
was overturned by a federal judge who ruled that confessions
from his co-conspirators shouldn't have been admitted into
evidence. In the same ruling, the judge wrote that "trial
evidence showed Fratta to be egotistical, misogynistic, and
vile, with a callous desire to kill his wife."
He was retried and resentenced to death in 2009.
Andy Kahan, the director of victim services and advocacy for
Crime Stoppers of Houston, said that Farah Fratta's father, Lex
Baquer, who died in 2018, raised Robert and Farah Fratta's three
children with his wife. He said ahead of the execution that he
hoped it would be a way for them "to continue to move on with
their lives and at the very least they won't have to think about
him anymore. I think that will play an important part in their
healing."
Fratta was the first inmate put to death this year in Texas and
the second in the U.S. Eight other executions are scheduled in
Texas for later this year.
8)
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