08 March 2017 :

Rolando Ruiz, 44, Hispanic, was executed Tuesday night. Prison officials at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville administered the lethal drugs at around 10:30 p.m. He was pronounced dead 29 minutes later. It was delayed for several hours as the US Supreme Court considered a last-minute appeal. The issue weighed by the Supreme Court Tuesday night was whether Ruiz had been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment by spending 17 years in solitary confinement. Ruiz's attorneys argued in their petition that he had been, which would constitute a violation of the Eighth Amendment. The high court disagreed. Ruiz was convicted of the July 14, 1992 contract killing of Theresa Rodriguez. He accepted $2,000 to murder the woman from the victim's husband (Michael Rodriguez) and her brother-in-law (Mark Rodriguez), who were looking to collect $400,000 from life insurance policies they took out on her. It was said by some that Ruiz never showed remorse for the 29-year-old woman's death -- but he did in his final statement Tuesday night. "I would like to say to the Sanchez family how sorry I am. Words cannot begin to express how sorry I am and the hurt that I have caused you and your family," he told the woman's relatives just moments before his execution began. The Rodriguez brothers pleaded guilty in the case and received life in prison. Ruiz, who was 20 at the time of the crime, was given a death sentence after a jury found him guilty of capital murder in May 1995. Michael Rodriguez was later a member of the Texas Seven, a group of prisoners who escaped from a prison in east central Texas in 2000. He was executed in 2008 for killing a police officer during the escape. Ruiz's execution is the third this year in Texas and the 541st in Texas since 1982. It is the fifth death sentence carried out in the United States this year, and the 1447 since 1977.