Ruiz receives temporary stay of execution

San Antonio Express-News July 11, 2007

Ruiz receives temporary stay of execution

A Bexar County man who was scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening was granted a temporary stay of execution after a federal court granted last-day attempts to save his life.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued its opinion more than an hour after Rolando Ruiz Jr. 35 , was to be punished for the 1992 slaying of 29-year-old Theresa Rodriguez. The court agreed the concerns raised by Ruiz's attorneys were serious and that more time was needed to review them, officials said.

"I'm relieved and hopeful that we'll finally get what we're after," said Ruiz's attorney Morris Moon . "Just one full review of Mr. Ruiz's sentence."

Ruiz was convicted of capital murder and sent to death row after he confessed to police that he had been paid $2,000 to kill Rodriguez, who was fatally shot in her driveway nearly 15 years ago on July 14, 1992 . His lawyers argued earlier this week in federal court that their client had been denied his constitutional right to effective counsel in the punishment phase of his trial. But the Texas attorney general's office rejected that claim.

Jason Clark , spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said here Tuesday that he informed Ruiz of the stay of his death sentence.

"He seemed genuinely at a loss for words," Clark told reporters.

Ruiz was scheduled to be put to death at 6 p.m., and would have become the 19th inmate to be executed this year in Texas, the 3rd from Bexar County, had the sentence been carried out.

With Tuesdays stay, Ruiz instead joined a growing list of Texas death row inmates whose executions have been halted this year. Since early May, 4 others have been spared for a variety of reasons.

Lawyers had earlier argued that jurors at Ruiz's trial were not told about potentially mitigating evidence, including relatives' claims that Ruiz was neglected and abused as a child and a psychologist's report that stated he was heavily influenced by drugs and alcohol.

But the attorney general's office rejected those arguments as not sufficiently compelling, stating in a response that "much of the proffered evidence was presented to the jury in some form, was otherwise irrelevant, or was potentially double-edged in nature."

An affidavit that lawyers had hoped would help save Ruiz instead was cited in the response as evidence of his "complete disregard for humanity." An aunt had claimed in the affidavit that Ruiz suffered an unstable and rough childhood and at one point was placed in a shelter.

A few days before the murder, according to the document, Ruiz's mother was pressuring him to get a job and told him to "bring money into the house or get out."

And so, investigators said, Ruiz killed Rodriguez and then went to play basketball for the rest of the evening. The next day he took his mother some money and used the rest of it to buy cocaine, according to the affidavit.

"Ruiz was unwilling to work for a living, so he committed this murder for only ($2,000) to avoid getting kicked out of his house or having to get a job," the attorney general's office stated in its denial.

The response also noted that Ruiz at his trial blamed himself for his drug use and claimed that he came from a good family and was not physically or mentally abused.

Investigators said the victim's husband and brother-in-law hired Ruiz to commit the slaying so they could collect $400,000 dollars in insurance money.

After stalking Rodriguez for days, Ruiz shot her once in the head as she stepped from her car in the garage of her North Side home, investigators said. She smiled at her killer before he fired, said Assistant District Attorney Robert McClure, who prosecuted Ruiz.

4 others were convicted in the slaying, including the victim's husband and brother-in-law, an intermediary in the murder-for hire and a man who accompanied Ruiz on the night of the shooting.
Source: San Antonio Express-News