HUNTSVILLE — A Texas man who waived his right to appeal his death sentence was executed Tuesday night for killing his 3-month-old son more than 16 years ago, one of five executions scheduled within a week in the United States.
AP
Travis Mullis, 38, was given a lethal injection at Huntsville State Penitentiary and pronounced dead at 7:01 p.m. CDT. He was convicted of stomping his son Alijah to death in January 2008.
Mullis is the fourth inmate executed this year in Texas, the state with the highest death penalty. Another execution was carried out Tuesday night in Missouri, and executions were scheduled for Thursday in Oklahoma and Alabama. An execution was carried out Friday in South Carolina.
Authorities say Mullis, then 21 and a resident of Brazoria County, drove to Galveston with his son after a fight with his girlfriend. Mullis pulled over his car and sexually assaulted his son. After the infant began crying uncontrollably, Mullis began strangling the child before pulling him out of the car and stomping on his head, authorities said.
The baby’s body was later found on the side of the road. Mullis fled the state but was later arrested after turning himself in to police in Philadelphia.
Mullis’ execution came after one of his attorneys, Shawn Nolan, said he did not intend to appeal the decision in order to spare the inmate’s life. Nolan also said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that Texas would execute a “redeemed man” who has always accepted responsibility for committing “a horrific crime.”
“He never had a chance at life, abandoned by his parents and then severely abused by his adoptive father starting at age three. During his decade and a half on death row, he spent countless hours working on his redemption. And he did it. The Travis that Texas wanted to kill is long gone. Rest in peace TJ,” Nolan said.
Mullis declined an offer earlier in the day to call his attorney from a holding cell outside the death chamber, said Hannah Haney, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. His attorneys also have not filed a clemency petition with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
In a February letter to District Judge George Hanks in Houston, Mullis wrote that he had no intention of further contesting his case. Mullis has already taken responsibility for his son’s death and said “his punishment fits the crime.”
At Mullis’ trial, prosecutors said Mullis was a “monster” who manipulated people, was deceitful and refused medical and psychiatric help when offered to him.
Since his conviction in 2011, Mullis has been at odds with his various attorneys over whether to appeal his case. Mullis has repeatedly asked for his appeals to be dropped, only to change his mind.
Nolan previously told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a June 2023 hearing that Texas state courts erred in ruling that Mullis was mentally competent when he waived his right to appeal his case a decade earlier.
Nolan told the appeals court that Mullis had been treated for “profound mental illness” since he was 3, had been sexually abused as a child and was “severely bipolar,” which led him to change his mind about appealing.
Natalie Thompson, who worked at the time in the Texas attorney general’s office, told the appeals court that Mullis understood what he was doing and could go against his lawyers’ advice “even though he suffers from mental illness.”
The appeals court upheld Hank’s 2021 ruling that Mullis had “repeatedly competently elected to waive review” of his death sentence.
The U.S. Supreme Court has banned the death penalty for people with intellectual disabilities, but not for people with serious mental illness.
If the remaining executions in Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma go ahead as scheduled, it will be the first time in more than 20 years — since July 2003 — that five people will be executed in seven days, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no position on capital punishment but is critical of how states carry out executions.
The first occurred on Friday, when South Carolina placed an inmate Freddie Owens to death. Also on Tuesday, Marcellus Williams was executed in Missouri. Alan Miller in Alabama and Emmanuel Littlejohn in Oklahoma are scheduled to be executed Thursday.
