Two Fort Worth murderers, including suspected serial killer, dodge their executions
Two convicted killers from Fort Worth — including a suspected serial killer — who were set to die by lethal injection within the next four weeks have both won reprieves.
On Friday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay of execution for Juan Ramon Meza Segundo, a Fort Worth man sentenced in December 2006 to die for the 1986 rape and strangulation of 11-year-old Vanessa Villa.
Segundo had also been linked through DNA to the rape and strangulation of three women and had been deemed a “sexual serial killer” by Tarrant County prosecutors.
His attorney had filed a writ on Sept. 25, arguing that he is intellectually disabled and therefore, ineligible for execution. He had been scheduled for execution on Wednesday.
Vanessa’s brother, Enrique Estrada Balderas, had planned to witness Segundo take his last breath this week. He expressed disappointment in the court’s decision to grant Segundo a stay and said he does not believe Segundo is intellectually disabled.
“I don’t think he is because he knew what he was doing. He did not only kill my sister, he killed some other ladies, too,” Balderas said. “He didn’t care about nobody. He just wants to do what he wants to do and that’s it.”
Also on Friday, State District Judge Robb Catalano ordered the withdrawal of the Nov. 7 execution date for Emanuel Kemp Jr.
Kemp was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to death for hijacking a city bus, then forcing the driver to drive to an isolated area in Trinity Park where he raped and fatally stabbed a 34-year-old female passenger, Johnnie Mae Gray.
Kemp’s attorney, Greg Westfall, had filed motions last month, asking that DNA testing be done in the largely circumstantial capital murder case and that Kemp’s execution date be delayed.
Last week, the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office filed a response, agreeing that Kemp should not be put to death until DNA testing is performed.
The state, however, had fought Segundo’s motion for a stay of execution, pointing to a similar claim that the death row inmate had made that the court denied after a 2009 writ hearing.
In granting Segundo’s stay of execution on Friday, the Court of Criminal Appeals pointed to a March 2017 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Moore v. Texas that struck down the state’s previous standard for evaluating intellectual disability claims.
Segundo’s attorney, Jennae R. Swiergula, had argued that “considerable new information has convinced two experts that their previous testimony was wrong” and that there is “clear and convincing evidence that any rational factfinder would find that Mr. Segundo is intellectually disabled.”
The Texas Attorney General’s Office had not filed an appeal of the stay as of Monday, according to spokeswoman Kayleigh Lovvorn.
Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Sharen Wilson said her office has “no issues with the decision to stay these executions.”
“If someone is sitting on death row, we need to make absolutely sure that it is the right decision. All questions must be answered, and all relevant tests should be performed,” Wilson said in an email Monday.
“We trust the system. If there are any problems, these processes are how we uncover them, as in the case of Paul Storey,” she added.
Storey was days away from his execution date last year when the court granted him a stay because the murdered man’s parents, Glenn and Judy Cherry, said they never wanted to see their son’s killer put to death as jurors had been told by prosecutors.
A judge ruled in May that prosecutors lied in that capital murder case and that Storey should spend the rest of his life in prison instead of being put to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has not issued a ruling in that case.
This story was originally published October 8, 2018 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Two Fort Worth murderers, including suspected serial killer, dodge their executions."