by Michael Graczyk, Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - Maintaining his innocence, Gerald Tigner was executed Thursday night for killing two men during a shooting spree almost nine years ago when he was free on bond awaiting trial for another slaying.
“I was wrongfully convicted of this crime,” Tigner, 29, of Waco said just before the drugs went flowing through the veins of his arms. “I got convicted on a false confession. My lawyer didn’t point this out to the jury. I did not kill those two drug dealers.”
He expressed love to his family and friends, adding, “I’ll see you all later.”
He was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m., nine minutes after the lethal drugs began flowing.
His execution for the Aug. 31, 1993, shootings was the sixth this year and second in eight days. Another lethal injection is set for later this month.
Tigner’s attorneys had asked the courts for DNA testing of blood on shoes he was wearing the day of the shootings, contending if the blood was not from the victims, it would prove Tigner was not there.
“If you’re not at the crime scene, you’re not guilty,” Tigner said in a recent death row interview. “I was not there. I was at home with my family.”
Tigner said a friend, Guan Scott, was the gunman who fatally shot James Williams, 22, and Michael Watkins, 32. Scott, however, was killed in an unrelated shooting before Tigner’s trial.
Tigner repeated from the death chamber gurney that Scott was the gunman.
Prosecutors disputed Tigner’s version of events, noting they had eyewitnesses to the shooting - two of them identifying Tigner at his trial - and that Tigner, arrested a day after the double slaying, gave investigators two confessions that included details only the killer could know.
“He said he shot with three different caliber weapons, a 9 mm, a .38 and a .22,” Crawford Long, a McLennan County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Tigner, said this week. “He got the exact calibers. It was known only to him and it was confirmed later by ballistics.”
Tigner contended the confessions were contrived by a detective who “wrote what he wanted to write.”
“I made up an unbelievable self-defense story,” Tigner said. “It was not consistent with any evidence at the crime scene. The key part is I did not admit to being at the crime scene, did not admit to driving the truck to the crime scene. This is what the jury missed.”
“He’s intelligent but he uses that intelligence for evil ends,” Long said of Tigner, whose criminal record began at age 16 when he received probation for a burglary. He had later convictions for criminal mischief, making a terroristic threat and evading police.
“There was no doubt ... that he was definitely guilty,” Robert Bell, Williams’ brother, said after watching Tigner die. “You’ve got to be on this side in order to understand what we had to go through, to identify our brother and look at pictures and go through that graphic scene again. For any family, that’s difficult.
“Our brother is gone. We can thank God that this individual has been taken off the streets where he won’t do it again.”
In December 1992, he confessed to fatally shooting his mother’s ex-boyfriend. Tigner contended that shooting was in self-defense and was out on bond when Watkins and Williams were killed.
Court records show Tigner was driving a truck, accompanied by Scott and Scott’s brother, Timothy, when they spotted a car with Watkins and Williams inside. Tigner flagged them down and he and Guan Scott approached the other pair.
What happened next is unclear, although testimony showed Tigner started hollering at them and began firing into the car, walking alongside the car while continuing to fire. Witnesses said after he ran out of ammunition, he went back to his own truck, got another weapon and returned to the car. By then, Watkins had fallen from the car and was trying to crawl away. Tigner straddled him and shot him in the head, witnesses said.
“He’s a very cold-blooded person,” Long said.
Watkins was shot 10 times, including twice in the head. Williams was shot seven times, four of them to the head. Police found cocaine in the bullet-riddled car and the pockets of at least one of the slain men were turned inside-out, although it wasn’t known if the pair also was robbed of cash.
Witnesses reported the license plate of Tigner’s truck to police. He was arrested the next day.
Tigner was convicted and condemned twice for the Williams and Watkins slayings. His first conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which found prosecutors did not provide to Tigner’s attorneys in a timely fashion a tape recorded confession he made to police.