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Death Chamber for Ricardo Ortiz high-ranking prison gang member whose violent history included an attack on an inmate with a homemade spear

high-ranking prison gang member whose violent history included an attack on an inmate with a homemade spear was headed to the Texas death chamber Thursday night for fatally injecting a fellow prisoner with an overdose of heroin.Ricardo Ortiz would be the second condemned killer executed in Texas in as many nights and the fifth this year in the nation's most active death penalty state.
Ortiz, 46, was sentenced to die for the slaying of Gerardo Garcia, 22, who authorities said was killed at the El Paso County jail more than 11 years ago. The slaying was in retaliation for snitching on Ortiz and so he couldn't testify against Ortiz about bank robberies the pair were suspected of carrying out, authorities said.Ortiz sought to put off the execution so he could get federal money to pay for legal representation to file a state clemency request. His appeal, however, was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court about two hours before he was scheduled to die.The appeal issue is under review by the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments in January in the case of Tennessee death row inmate John Harbison. Similar appeals from other condemned inmates hoping to delay their punishments until the justices resolved the Tennessee case so far have failed.State attorneys had opposed the request to the courts, contending even if Ortiz presented a clemency petition to the governor, it likely would fail."The facts of his capital crime ... make Ortiz the 'poster child' for future dangerousness: his victim was a fellow inmate," the Texas Attorney General's Office said in a court filing.Another late appeal rejected Thursday by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals contended Ortiz's constitutional rights were violated because prosecutors said he was affiliated with the Texas Syndicate, a well-known primarily Hispanic prison gang.
A sergeant in El Paso County Sheriff's Department described Ortiz as the highest-ranking Texas Syndicate member in El Paso and that Ortiz's status made him the "tank boss" in the jail, putting him in control of other gang members there.Ortiz declined to speak with reporters in the weeks preceding his execution date. He had a long criminal history that included robbery, aggravated robbery, burglary and possessing deadly weapons in prison, including a homemade spear used to stab a fellow inmate. Records show he was known as "Serrucho," Spanish for "Handsaw.""All the Texas Syndicate guys in the county jail were in the same tank and the young man killed was one of them," Joe Rosales, the former district attorney who prosecuted Ortiz, recalled last week. "From what we found out, he was a prospect, somebody to be brought into the gang but was not a full-fledged member at that time."We were able to persuade the jury, and we felt evidence showed, that he felt this prospect was going to implicate him in some robberies that had been taking place.Defense attorneys tried to show jurors Garcia had a death wish and was considering suicide.Garcia and Ortiz were allowed to see one another being interviewed by FBI agents investigating a series of unsolved bank robberies, hoping each would assume the other was cooperating. Neither man would budge, however, and both were placed in the same area of the El Paso Detention Center, where Garcia was found dead in 1997 of a heroin injection three times more potent than the amount that could kill him.Other jail inmates testified Ortiz obtained the drug the previous day and injected Garcia, saying his bank robbery partner had to die for implicating him.Evidence also showed Ortiz was arrested in 1990 but never tried for in the execution-style slayings of two Houston-area parolees, Anthony Rosalio Acosta, 42, and Jimmy Lopez Rangel, 29, whose bodies were found in the desert near Fabens, southeast of El Paso.

Ortiz's execution was scheduled for 24 hours after Virgil Martinez, 41, a former Houston security guard, was put to death for gunning down four people, including his ex-girlfriend and her two small children, during a 1996 shooting frenzy in Brazoria County.

Next week, condemned prisoner David Martinez is set to die Wednesday for the 1994 slayings of his live-in girlfriend, Carolina Prado, 37, and her son, Erik, 14, at their home in San Antonio. Both victims were fatally beaten with a baseball bat.

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