A Fort Worth gang member is set to die by lethal injection in Huntsville Wednesday night, the state's fifth execution of 2018. Erick Davila was convicted in 2009 of killing a young girl and her grandmother.
“Mr. Davila and a co-defendent drove to a children's birthday party, he went inside that apartment and opened fire and those shots resulted in the deaths of an adult female and 5-year-old female, there were also several other victims injured,” says Jeremy Desel, spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Davila will be the fifth death row inmate put to death in Texas this year. Five more are scheduled through September.
Unlike many inmates scheduled to die, the 31-year-old was placed on death row less than a decade ago.
“Some do stay on death row for a significant period of time and some don't,” says Desel. “It has to do for the most part with the jurisdiction where they were convicted and what the status of their appeals might be.”
Davila has only one appeal still pending to the U.S. Supreme Court.