Texas officials didn’t dispute that prosecutors introduced false testimony at Travis Runnels’ 2005 capital murder trial. Instead, they argued the state should still execute him. On Wednesday, Texas put him to death, the Texas Tribune reports. The 46-year-old man was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 7:04 p.m. There was no question of Runnels’ guilt in the 2003 prison murder of Stanley Wiley, a supervisor at a boot factory where Runnels worked while serving a 70-year aggravated robbery sentence. He pleaded guilty at trial, despite knowing the state was seeking the death penalty.
At his punishment hearing, where jurors weigh how likely a capital murder convict is to be dangerous in the future, the state introduced as a witness A.P. Merillat, at the time a criminal investigator for prosecutors who handle prison crimes. He has testified in at least 15 trials that resulted in death sentences, but his incorrect testimony on the levels of security in prisons has since led to two overturned death sentences in Texas. Runnels’ lawyers had hoped the state’s reliance on Merillat’s testimony would prompt the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution, too. “As was the case in several other capital trials in which Merillat testified, the purpose of his testimony was to establish for the jury that the state prison system’s security for non-death sentenced inmates was so lax that the defendant would be a danger to others in prison if he received a life sentence,” defense attorneys told the Supreme Court. About 30 minutes after his execution was scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., the high court denied Runnels’ final appeal.