HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- Remorseless to the last, Vaughn Ross was executed Thursday night, July 18, for a 2001 double murder in Lubbock.
"We know the lies they told in court," Ross said.
Ross was convicted in 2002 of killing Douglas Birdsall, a Texas Tech administrator, and an 18-year-old woman, Viola Ross, no relation.
Prosecutors said jealousy and anger led to the killings. Ross admitted he was angry at Viola Ross -- the sister of his girlfriend, Liza Ross McVade.
Police and prosecutors said Birdsall, who had given Viola Ross a ride -- apparently to pick up her sister at Ross' apartment -- was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Vaughn Ross, a 41-year-old former Texas Tech architecture student, spoke for about a minute Thursday before closing with the words, "That's it."
It was 6:15 p.m. A minute later, the lethal dose of pentobarbital was added to the saline drip in his arms.
Ross' breathing quickly became labored, and he seemed to briefly strain against the leather restraints.
His eyes slowly closed, and he snored several times.
He was pronounced dead at 6:38 p.m.
Ross' last hope for a reprieve faded at about 5:45 p.m., when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his application for a stay.
He was brought to the execution chamber at 6:03 p.m.
The condemned and the witnesses can see each other through barred windows. Ross glanced through the window at the room where friends or surviving family members can observe the execution and mouthed, "Who are they?" He did not appear to look at the other room, where the condemned's family members can observe.
None of Ross' family attended. The room had several Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials and three members of the news medfia.
Birdsall's brother, Roger, of Tracy, Calif., attended the execution along with Lubbock police detective D'Wayne Proctor, who was the lead detective in the investigation.
Ross had been on death row since October 2002.
He was the 10th person executed by the state in 2013, and the 502nd to die since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982. Four more executions have been scheduled between now and the end of the year.
Michael John Yowell, another Lubbock County inmate, is scheduled to die Oct. 9.
Copyright 2013 - Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Texas
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
