from :http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/local/11685458.htm
Posted on Thu, May. 19, 2005
Chicago native set to die for Texas slaying
MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - The men posing as homosexuals figured the gay men who frequented an area of the bay front in Corpus Christi would be easy robbery targets. They didn't plan on one of their victims resisting.
"When they try to rob the guy while they're all drinking beer, he doesn't give up," recalled Mark Skurka, an assistant district attorney in Nueces County.
Nick Moraida, 37, wound up stabbed, fatally shot and robbed of his watch and wallet containing between $60 and $200.
Chicago native Richard Cartwright ended up on death row, convicted of Moraida's slaying, and was scheduled for lethal injection Thursday evening. He would be the second condemned Texas inmate put to death in 24 hours and eighth this year.
Bryan Wolfe, 44, a twice-convicted robber from Louisiana, was executed Wednesday evening for the 1992 robbery-slaying of Bertha Lemell, an 84-year-old Beaumont woman who babysat his children.
Two accomplices charged with Cartwright, 31, in the August 1996 attack on Moraida testified against him. Dennis Hagood, 28, is serving a 20-year prison term. Kelly Overstreet, 27, is serving 66 years.
The U.S. Supreme Court in January refused to review Cartwright's case and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles this week voted 7-0 to reject a clemency petition. In an appeal to the courts this week, Cartwright's lawyers argued he shot Moraida under pressure from one of his companions and jurors who determined Cartwright should die never were aware of that duress.
In a similar appeal, Cartwright's attorneys were hoping Gov. Rick Perry would grant a 30-day reprieve based on a May 2 declaration from Overstreet in which he said his trial testimony against Cartwright was false.
Testimony showed Cartwright, Hagood and Overstreet lured Moraida to a park area with the idea Cartwright and Overstreet would rob him while Hagood rifled through their victim's car. Moraida, however, resisted the robbery attempt and Overstreet stabbed him, prosecutors said.
The stab wound wasn't fatal and when Moraida tried to run, Cartwright shot him, Skurka said.
Two fishermen found Moraida's body the next morning. Cartwright was arrested a few days later. His companions agreed to a plea deal and testified against Cartwright.
Just before his trial, Cartwright wrote letters from jail to his partners urging them to all agree on a single story. The letters were intercepted by authorities.
"They were very incriminating," Skurka said. "That helped hang him. We had the co-defendants, the accomplices, and we had to have corroborating testimony, and he provided it."
During the punishment phase of his trial, Cartwright's wife testified how he was a good man and good father. Under cross-examination, however, prosecutors introduced a police report she filed accusing her husband of beating her and saying she was afraid he would kill her.
The former mechanic who was born and raised in Chicago and was known on death row as "Chi-town" did not testify at his trial and declined interviews with reporters in the weeks leading up to his execution date. But he mounted an extensive campaign on an anti-death penalty Web site professing his innocence and opposition to his punishment.
"I am just another statistic in the dubious title held by the State of Texas - death penalty capital of the world," he wrote. "There are many reasons that this is wrong, not the least of which is that I did not commit the crime for which I was convicted and sentenced to death."
Testimony against him at his trial was "a tangled web of lies, woven into a story of unadulterated fiction by the state of Texas to convict me and put me in the place I am today," he said.
"He's a liar," Skurka responded.
---
On the net:
Texas Department of Criminal Justice execution schedule
www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/scheduledexecutions.htmCartwright web site
www.ccadp.org/richardcartwright.htm