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HUNTSVILLE — Two last-minute appeals filed today halted Texas' first planned execution after a nine-month hiatus.
The Court of Criminal Appeals granted the stay after attorneys for the Texas Defender Service took up Derrick Juan Sonnier's case in the last few days. The length of the stay has not been determined.
The 40-year-old was sentenced to die for the 1991 stabbing deaths of Melody Flowers, 27, and her 2-year-old son, Patrick.
The Texas Defender Service submitted an appeal arguing that the state recently made changes to its three-drug cocktail protocol. The changes have not been reviewed by any court. The second appeal also contends the lethal injection protocol violates the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. That contention has not been addressed by Texas courts after a Kentucky decision.
Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the protocol had not changed. Prison officials, however, made changes to internal written procedures in light of the Supreme Court's ruling on lethal injection in April, which upheld the procedure used in Texas and dozens of other states.
The state, for example, added the minimum amount of training executioners receive.
"We clarified in writing what we were already doing," Lyons said, "The protocol remains the same."
If the execution had occurred, Sonnier would have been the first Texan to be put to death since September, when the Supreme Court took up a Kentucky case that challenged the constitutionality of the lethal injection process. Sonnier had been scheduled to die in February, but prosecutors set aside that date to await the high court's ruling.
Two of Flowers' daughters and other family members had planned to witness today's execution.
On Sept. 16, 1991, police found Flowers in the tub of her Humble apartment.
The single mother of five had been bludgeoned with a claw hammer, raped, strangled and stabbed. Her body was dumped in the partially filled bathtub. The stabbed body of her toddler, Patrick, was on top of her.
Sonnier was dating one of Flowers' close friends and lived near Flowers and her children. Authorities said Sonnier had stalked Flowers for months, once even slipping into her apartment when she was not home.
The day of the murders, neighbors reported seeing Sonnier with a wounded hand wrapped in a towel. In his apartment, where Sonnier lived with his girlfriend, police found Flowers' bloody blouse and a blood-soaked towel that also belonged to her.
Police later found a grocery bag stashed in a field near the complex that had his bloody socks, shoes, and other items that connected him to the crime.
Sonnier has maintained his innocence in the case.
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