HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A man convicted of killing three teenagers while they slept in a Texas Panhandle home more than 25 years ago was executed on Wednesday, the sixth inmate to be put to death in the U.S. this year and the second in as many days.
John Balentine, 54, whose attorneys had argued that his trial was marred by racial bias, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, for the January 1998 shooting deaths of Edward Mark Caylor, 17, Kai Brooke Geyer, 15, and Steven Watson, 15, at a home in Amarillo. Prosecutors said all three were shot once in the head as they slept.
Balentine appeared jovial as witnesses were entering the death chamber, asking if someone standing near the gurney could remove the sheet covering the lower two-thirds of his body “and massage my feet.” Then he chuckled.
After a brief prayer from a spiritual adviser who held Balentine’s left foot with his right hand, the prisoner gave a short statement thanking friends for supporting him. Then he turned his head to look through a window at seven relatives of his three murder victims and apologized.
“I hope you can find in your heart to forgive me,” he said.
The mothers of each of the three victims were among the witnesses a few feet from him.
He took two breaths as the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began flowing through intravenous needles in his arms, snored twice, yawned and began snoring again loudly. The snores — 11 of them —became progressively quieter, then stopped.
At 6:36 p.m., 15 minutes after the drugs began, a physician pronounced him dead. The victims’ witnesses then shared high-fives before leaving the death chamber. They declined to speak with reporters afterward.
Caylor’s sister, who was among the witnesses watching him die, was Balentine’s former girlfriend, and prosecutors said the shootings stemmed from a feud between Caylor and Balentine. Ballentine, however, argued that Caylor and others had threatened his…
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