HUNTSVILLE, TX – The State of Texas carried out the execution Wednesday night of a black man who confessed to shooting to death three white teens in Amarillo in 1998.
John Balentine, 54, whose attorneys argued his trial was marred by racial bias, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, for the January 1998 deaths of Edward Mark Caylor, 17, Kai Brooke Geyer, 15, and Steven Watson, 15, in Amarillo. Prosecutors said all three were shot once in the head.
The Guardian reports that Balentine confessed to the murders. One of his attorneys said Balentine turned down a plea agreement that would have sentenced him to life in prison because racist threats made him afraid of being attacked or killed while incarcerated.
Balentine was the sixth inmate to be put to death in the US this year and the second in as many days.
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He murdered three white kids but, his trial was marred by racial bias?
Give me a break.
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