Lawyers: Death Row inmate didn't intend to kill two people, was highly intoxicated

In a last-ditch effort to save him, Houston defense attorneys for a condemned inmate from Fort Worth argue that he should be spared death because he did not intend to kill two people in 2008 and he was high on a narcotic cocktail.

Erick Davila, 31, is scheduled to be put to death April 25.

Attorneys Seth Kretzer and Jonathan Landers filed court papers last week seeking a stay of execution for Davila, who was convicted of capital murder in the shooting death of a rival gang member's mother and a 5-year-old girl at a Fort Worth birthday party on April 6, 2008.

A Tarrant County jury convicted Davila in 2009 of killing 47-year-old Annette Stevenson and her granddaughter Queshawn Stevenson, 5. He wounded four other people.

Davila's attorneys have argued that the pair were not Davila's target and that he was aiming for rival gang member Jerry Stevenson, according to the court filings. They noted that killing one person is not by itself a capital crime.

Court papers also argue that prosecutors failed to disclose that Davila was "dangerously intoxicated at the time of the shooting."

"The jury never learned that at the time of the shooting Davila was heavily intoxicated, likely to the degree that it would have rendered him temporarily insane," according to the filing.

In February, lawyers interviewed Davila's co-defendant, who told them that Davila had consumed ecstasy, marijuana and PCP the day of the killings.

Court papers also claim that Davila had ineffective lawyers and that the judge gave the jury bad instructions.

This story was originally published April 4, 2018 at 2:51 PM with the headline "Lawyers: Death Row inmate didn't intend to kill two people, was highly intoxicated."