(Washington) An American sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer is to be executed Wednesday evening in Texas, despite suspicions of racism that have marred his trial.
Unless the U.S. Supreme Court grants him a last-minute reprieve, Wesley Ruiz, a 43-year-old Hispanic man, will be given a lethal injection in Huntsville Penitentiary.
In 2007, in Dallas, he was chased by police who suspected his vehicle of being involved in a homicide.
At the end of a chase, he had fired a shot at a policeman who was trying to break the window of his car with his truncheon. The bullet had killed this agent.
During his trial, Wesley Ruiz had claimed to have feared for his life and shot in a gesture of “self-defense”, recalls the local press. The jurors still condemned him to the death penalty.
In the following years, his lawyers unsuccessfully brought several appeals to challenge the sentence.
As the date of the execution approached, they filed an emergency motion, arguing that the jurors had relied on “openly racist” material and “clearly hostile stereotypes against Hispanics” in assessing the death. dangerousness of Mr. Ruiz.
One of the jurors had described him as an “animal”, “a mad dog” and considered that the Hispanics present at the trial were “gang members”, they pleaded in court documents.
Their appeal was dismissed at first instance, on appeal, and is now before the United States Supreme Court.
Wesley Ruiz has also joined a lawsuit brought by several Texas death row inmates who accuse the state prison services of allowing the expiry date of lethal substances used in executions to expire.
According to them, this risks causing unlawful suffering, since the Constitution prohibits “inhumane punishments”.
The authorities assure that their stocks of pentobarbital do not pose a problem.
If he does not get it right, Wesley Ruiz will be the fourth convict executed since the beginning of the year in the United States.