Michael Griffith, a former sheriff’s deputy in Houston’s Harris County, is set set for execution tonight for the rape, robbery, and stabbing death of a Houston woman more than 12 years ago, reports the Associated Press. Griffith, one of the few former lawmen ever on death row, is the first of five killers scheduled for lethal injection this month in Texas. “It’s amazing to see a policeman go bad like that,” said Ira Jones, who prosecuted Griffith, referring to his long criminal record. “Policemen make mistakes. They are human beings. But to go that bad, there’s something seriously wrong.”
Scheduled to die next is Cathy Henderson, facing lethal injection June 13 for the 1994 slaying of a 3-month-old child she was baby-sitting. Henderson would be the fourth woman executed in Texas since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982 and the 12th nationally since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume.
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