02 February 2018 :

John David Battaglia, 62, White, was executed. He received a lethal injection for gunning down his 2 young daughters in what prosecutors called the “ultimate revenge” against his ex-wife. Battaglia killed 9-year-old Faith and 6-year-old Liberty in May 2001 as their mother listened helplessly on the telephone. He was sentenced in Dallas County on April 30, 2002 (see). After the shooting, Battaglia went to a bar with his girlfriend and was arrested shortly afterward at a tattoo parlour where he was getting rose tattoos to remember his dead daughters, court documents showed. Battaglia attempted to use mental competence defence. State Judge Robert Burns, who found Battaglia competent, said his intelligence and education — he had a master's degree — showed he had the "motive and intellectual capability to maintain a deliberate ploy or ruse to avoid his execution". Battaglia was the 3rd prisoner put to death this year in Texas, the 548th since the state resumed executions in 1982, the 3rd prisoner put to death this year in the U.S., and the 1,468th in the United States since USA resumed executions in 1977.