HUNTSVILLE – A Texas man who has waived his right to appeal his death sentence was sentenced to death Tuesday evening for killing his 3-month-old son more than 16 years ago, one of five executions scheduled in a week in the US.
AP
Travis Mullis, 38, received a lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 7:01 pm CDT. He was condemned for stepping on the death of his son Alijah in January 2008.
Mullis is the fourth inmate to be put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Another execution took place Tuesday afternoon in Missouri, and on Thursday, executions are scheduled to take place in Oklahoma and Alabama. South Carolina carried out the execution on Friday.
Authorities said Mullis, then 21 and living in Brazoria County, drove to near Galveston with his son after a fight with his girlfriend. Mullis parked his car and attacked his son. After the baby started crying uncontrollably, Mullis began strangling the child before taking him out of the car and stomping on his head, according to authorities.
The baby’s body was later found on the side of the road. Mullis fled the country but was later arrested after surrendering to police in Philadelphia.
Mullis’ execution was stayed after one of his lawyers, Shawn Nolan, said he was not planning a final appeal to save the inmate’s life. Nolan also said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that Texas will execute “redeemed people” who always accept responsibility for committing “heinous crimes.”
“He never had a chance in life abandoned by his parents and then abused by his adoptive father from the age of three. During a decade and a half on death row, he spent many hours trying to redeem himself. And he got it. Travis who wanted to kill Texas had long gone,” Nolan said.
Mullis declined an offer earlier in the day to call his attorney from a holding cell outside the death chamber, said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Hannah Haney. His attorney also did not file a clemency petition with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
In a letter sent in February to U.S. District Judge George Hanks in Houston, Mullis wrote that he no longer wants to contest the case. Mullis has previously taken responsibility for her son’s death and said “the punishment fits the crime.”
At Mullis’ trial, prosecutors said Mullis was a “monster” who manipulated people, lied and refused medical and psychiatric help.
Since his conviction in 2011, Mullis has long disagreed with various lawyers on whether to appeal his case. Mullis sometimes asked to have his appeal thrown out, only to later change his mind.
Nolan previously told the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals during a June 2023 hearing that a state court in Texas had erred in ruling that Mullis was mentally competent when it denied him the right to appeal his case nearly a decade ago.
Nolan told the appeals court that Mullis had been treated for “profound mental illness” since the age of 3, was sexually abused as a child and was “severely bipolar,” leading him to change his mind about attracting attention.
Natalie Thompson, who was with the Texas Attorney General’s Office at the time, told the appeals court that Mullis knew what he was doing and was able to fight his lawyer’s advice “even though he was suffering from mental illness.”
An appeals court upheld Hank’s ruling in 2021 that found Mullis “repeatedly competently elected to deny review” of his death sentence.
The US Supreme Court has banned the application of the death penalty to people with intellectual disabilities, but not to people with serious mental illness.
If the remaining executions in Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma go ahead as planned, it will mark the first time in more than 20 years — since July 2003 — that five have been held in seven days, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which did not take a position. on the death penalty but has criticized the way the state carries out executions.
The first time was when South Carolina put a prisoner Freddie Owens until death. Tuesday too, Marcellus Williams executed in Missouri. On Thursday, executions are scheduled for Alan Miller in Alabama and Emmanuel Littlejohn in Oklahoma.
