HUNTSVILLE, Texas, Sept. 18 -- Texas prison inmate Joe Fedelfido Gonzales was executed by injection Wednesday after waiving all rights to appeal and spending only eight months on death row. Gonzales, 36, pleaded guilty to the 1992 capital murder of William J. Veader, 50, and set a new record for the shortest stay on death row by an executed Texas inmate. He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. Gonzales gave no final statement before the drugs were administered, but his attorney, Kent Birdsong, read a statement from Gonzales after the execution. 'There are people all over the world that face things worse than death on a daily basis, and it is in that sense that I consider myself lucky,' Birdsong read from Gonzales' statement. 'I cannot find the words to express the sadness I feel for bringing this hurt and pain on my loved ones. I will not ask forgiveness for decisions I have made in this judicial process, only acceptance. God bless you all.' No relatives of Gonzales or of Veader witnessed the execution. Other than prison officials and reporters, the only witness was Birdsong. He said he urged Gonzales to reconsider appealing the death sentence. 'Joe did not want to spend the rest of his life in prison,' Birdsong said. 'He committed a capital offense and told the state, 'I broke the rules. Use your rules to do what you're supposed to do.' 'He pretty much gave them his head on a silver platter,' Birdsong said.
Veader, 50, was shot in his rental home in Amarillo in 1992. He died from a single gunshot wound to the head, which initially appeared to have been self-inflicted. Amarillo police investigators eventually found evidence that Gonzales killed Veader and stole items from the house before arranging the crime scene to make it look like a suicide. Formerly a general contractor, Gonzales had served time in California prisons between 1993 and 1995 for drunk driving, robbery and assault. Potter County jurors took only 12 minutes to sentence Gonzales to the death for the murder. All Texas death sentences are automatically appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin. Gonzales filed a brief in which he raised no points of error and waived the appeal. 'This is a case made clear and simple by a man who has committed the ultimate crime and is requesting that the ultimate punishment be enforced and justice to be served without bringing a burden to the state of Texas and her taxpayers longer than need be,' Gonzales said in that brief. The execution was the 107th in Texas since the death penalty was reinstated in 1982, but only the third carried out this year. The Legislature enacted a new law in 1995 to speed up the appeals process in death penalty cases, but the effort has actually slowed the pace of executions. The main problem has been a lack of funds to pay lawyers appointed to represent death row inmates. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is also considering a legal challenge by defense attorneys who claim the Legislature did not have the power to limit the number of constitutional appeals that an defendant can make.
