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#Post#: 641--------------------------------------------------
~ Travis Mullis, 24Sep24, (TX) ~
By: BuzzC Date: June 1, 2024, 9:45 pm
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Execution date set for man who stomped his infant son to death
on Galveston seawall--
May 22nd, 2024
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A Brazoria County man who in 2008 stomped his infant son to
death on the Galveston seawall will be executed in September, a
Galveston County judge said Wednesday.
Travis James Mullis, 37, was convicted of killing his son,
Alijah, in 2011, and has been on death row since. Late last
month, Galveston County prosecutors notified District Court
Judge Jeth Jones that they were seeking an execution date.
Mullis’ final appeals of his conviction were dismissed last year
by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Jones approved the execution date during a short hearing
Wednesday morning. Mullis will be put to death by lethal
injection on Sept. 24 in Huntsville, said Galveston County First
Assistant District Attorney Kayla Allen.
“The jury assessed a death sentence,” said Allen, who was one of
the prosecutors over Mullis' murder trial. “I’m glad a date’s
been set. They speak for the community and it’s time to carry
that out.”
Mullis will be the first person executed as a result of a
Galveston County conviction since 2005, according to state
records.
On Jan. 29, 2008, Mullis drove from his home in Alvin to
Galveston with Alijah, his 3-month-old son, in the back seat of
his car. The trip came hours after Mullis had attempted to
sexually assault the 8-year-old daughter of a couple he was
staying with, and he was worried that he would soon be evicted
and turned over to police, according to his account to the
Chronicle.
When he arrived to a then-remote part of Seawall Boulevard, a
mile east of Ferry Road, Alijah started crying. Mullis proceeded
to sexually assault his son, attempted to choke him and then
crushed his skull. He flung the child’s body to the roadside and
drove away.
Mullis said he murdered his own child as an impulse.
He ran to Pennsylvania, but ultimately turned himself in to
Philadelphia police four days after Alijah’s body was found.
During his trial, Mullis' attorney argued that his
hardship-filled life had left him an “emotional mental health
quadriplegic” who was “unable to feel emotions.” Mullis' mother
was morbidly obese, toothless and smoking four packs of
cigarettes a day when he was in the womb, his defense attorneys
said in arguments to spare his life. She died when he was an
infant, leaving him with an adoptive father who sexually abused
him. Mullis received mental health treatment, including for
suicidal and homicidal behavior, after the age of 4, according
to testimony during his trial.
A jury took less than three hours to decide he should be
executed.
Mullis later said he disagreed with his lawyers' arguments and
that he was “100% guilty” of his crime.
During his trial and in the years since his conviction, Mullis
had sought to forfeit appeals of his death penalty. After the
appeals court’s ruling last year, Mullis' defense team allowed
other deadlines, which would have extended the legal challenge,
to lapse, Allen said. When those deadlines passed, Galveston
County prosecutors sought to set an execution,
“I support my death sentence and want it carried out ASAP,”
Mullis said in a letter to the Chronicle in 2017. “I was
sentenced to death not indefinite detention.”
Even given Mullis' own feelings, one of his defense attorneys
told Jones he was “troubled” that Mullis' case had never had a
constitutional review.
“I do think it is a systemic failure to let an execution to go
forward without any sort of review of the constitutionality of
that sentence,” defense attorney Peter Walker said.
Mullis' defense attorney couldn’t immediately be reached for
comment Wednesday afternoon.
There have been only six executions as a result of Galveston
County convictions since the death penalty was reinstituted in
1976. The most recent execution came in 2005 when Robert Shields
was put to death. Shields in 1995 beat a woman, Paula Stiner, to
death with a hammer while burglarizing her Friendswood home.
Texas has executed one person so far in 2024, and eight people
in 2023.
8)
#Post#: 666--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Travis Mullis, 24Sep24, (TX) ~
By: BuzzC Date: September 24, 2024, 10:21 pm
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Travis Mullis execution: Texas man executed for killing infant
son in 2008
Condemned for stomping baby Alijah to death, he was the fourth
inmate put to death this year in Texas...
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