LIVINGSTON, Texas -- Franklin Dewayne Alix admits the fatal shooting for which he was convicted but disputes evidence prosecutors used to tie him to a 6-month-long binge of murder, rape and robbery and convince a Houston jury to send him to death row.
Image is perception, Alix, 34, said recently during an interview with The Associated Press in a tiny visiting cage outside Texas death row. They had me looking like a drug-crazed addict. If I didn t know me and saw that, I d have hated me.
I never claimed to be totally innocent, but they took it and ran with it.
Alix faced lethal injection Tuesday evening in Huntsville for fatally shooting a 23-year-old Houston man, Eric Bridgeford, while robbing Bridgeford s sister s home 12 years ago. Before the robbery, Alix abducted and raped Bridgeford s sister.
He d be the fifth inmate executed this year in the nation s most active death penalty state. At least eight other Texas inmates have execution dates in the coming months.
Alix s lawyer, Robert Rosenberg, said appeals had been exhausted.
There s nothing that s going to be taking place, he said of any last-minute court action.
Earlier appeals unsuccessfully argued an unqualified medical examiner testified against him, that Harris County prosecutors knew the testimony was improper, DNA evidence excluding him from the slaying was improperly withheld and that his trial lawyers were deficient.
I see Franklin s trial as a petri dish of the most toxic materials around the courthouse, Rosenberg said.
According to trial testimony, Alix abducted Bridgeford s sister Jan. 3, 1998, forced her into the trunk of a car, raped her and drove her home. As he was ransacking her apartment, Bridgeford came home, saw Alix with a gun and ran off but was shot in the back. Alix drove away and was arrested a few days later.
I killed the dude, Alix said. I wasn t trying to, but I did. When the dude charged at me, the gun went off.
I was looking to rob, not kill. But once you put yourself in that situation, something s going to happen. You play with a gun, somebody s going to get killed.
That was his defense at his 1998 trial, where his lawyers tried to persuade a Harris County jury he didn t intend to kill Bridgeford. Jurors deliberated five hours before convicting him.
At his punishment trial, prosecutors said he was responsible for at least three other murders, two rapes and dozens of robberies from August 1997 through January 1998. He was charged with one other slaying but not tried.
I m not saying nothing happened to those people, Alix said, taking responsibility for some of the robberies but no other murders and no rapes. In a confession to police, he claimed the sex with Bridgeford s sister was consensual.
Harris County assistant district attorney Vanessa Velasquez, who is now a judge, called Alix the poster boy for the death penalty. Jurors in his sentencing trial deliberated about three hours before agreeing with her.
We had boxes full of offenses he was alleged to have committed, recalled Luci Davidson, a former assistant prosecutor who also worked on his case. Girls would be pulling into apartment complexes, and he d approach. He was known for putting victims in the trunks of cars and driving around with them.
Alix said a debt of a couple of thousand dollars to a friend got out of control and forced him to turn to robbery to get money. While he described it as not much money, he also said, When you don t have it, it s a lot. I just got myself caught up in a web.
I was raised up in a strict household. I wanted to do the right things in life but got caught up with the wrong folks.
DNA evidence used in his trial also played a role in a scandal involving the Houston Police Department s crime lab when retests discredited the initial results.
But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, affirming a federal district judge s findings, said the DNA evidence was part of a larger body of proof, including Alix s long history of violence, that showed jurors he was dangerous and should be sentenced to death.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected questions about an unlicensed medical examiner involved in the case, saying a supervising medical examiner may delegate duties to a deputy who isn t licensed. And the 5th Circuit said even if the state court was wrong, there was no constitutional violation for evidence improperly admitted.
Scheduled to die next, on April 22, is William Berkley, 31, condemned for the March 2000 abduction, robbery, rape and fatal shooting of 18-year-old Sophia Martinez, whose body was found in the desert outside El Paso.
