WASHINGTON: The US state of Texas on Tuesday executed a man with a history of paranoid schizophrenia, who was convicted of two killings and accused of two others.
James Bigby, a 61-year-old former mechanic, received a lethal injection in the early evening after spending more than a quarter of a century on death row.
In a long final statement, part of which was written and part of which was said aloud, Bigby asked the families of his victims for forgiveness and thanked his prison guards for their compassion.
He was found guilty in the 1987 murders of Michael Trekell, 26, and Trekell’s four-month-old son.
Bigby was also accused of killing Calvin Crane and Frank Johnson, but was not tried in those murders.
He confessed to the police that he had killed the men because he believed they were conspiring with Bigby’s then employer to dismiss a worker’s compensation lawsuit he had filed.
Bigby was unable to explain why he suffocated and drowned the baby.
The 1991 trial in Fort Worth took a dramatic turn when at one point during a recess, Bigby managed to grab a loaded handgun from a drawer in the courtroom.
He then attempted to escape by taking the trial judge, Don Leonard, hostage, but the judge subdued Bigby with the help of the prosecutor.
Leonard told the trial of the apparent escape attempt, complicating the work of Bigby’s lawyers who had tried to use an insanity plea in his defense.
