The first execution of 2018 in Texas and the nation took place Thursday evening for Houston’s “Tourniquet Killer.” reports the Texas Tribune. Anthony Shore, 55, is a confessed serial rapist and strangler whose murders went unsolved in the 1980s and 1990s. With no pending appeals, his execution was the first under Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, a Democrat who took office last January and has said she doesn’t see the death penalty as a deterrent to crime. She has said the punishment is appropriate for Shore, deeming him “the worst of the worst.”
Shore wasn’t arrested until 2003, when his DNA was matched to the 1992 murder of 21-year-old Maria Del Carmen Estrada. His DNA had been on file since 1998, when he pleaded no-contest to charges of sexually molesting his two daughters. After his arrest, he confessed to the murders of four young women and girls, including Estrada. Though he doesn’t argue that his client is innocent or undeserving of punishment, Shore’s lawyer, Knox Nunnally, was surprised Ogg continued to pursue the death penalty for Shore based on her previous statements on capital punishment. In two major death penalty cases that made their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ogg opted for reduced punishments. Shore’s execution was originally set for October, but Ogg postponed it after Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon requested a delay from her and Gov. Greg Abbott. Ligon was concerned that Shore might falsely confess another murder, potentially disrupting the existing death sentence for the man already convicted in that case.