Rapist/Murderer Scheduled to Die Tonight

Derrick O'Brien, the former gang member who at the age of 18 killed two young Houston girls, is scheduled to die tonight after his reprieve, issued May 15th by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, was recinded. O Brian and several friends, members of a gang, gang-raped and strangled Jennifer Ertman and her friend Elizabeth Pena in 1993. The girls were killed after they took a shortcut home one night and stumbled upon some teenagers drinking beer after intiating a new gang member, says KHOU. Fingerprint evidence, and a tip from a brother of one of the gang members, led police to O'Brien, one of 6 gang members convicted for the slaying. (He had also been a suspect in another murder, though he was never charged).

Several of the convicted killers are on death row: two others have had their death sentences commuted to life in prison because they were only seventeen at the time of the crime. One of the convicted killers is a major plaintiff in a suit that claims Mexican nationals accused of crimes in Texas have been convicted unlawfully because they were not alllowed access to help from the Mexican Consulate.

O'Brien himself was one of the Texas inmates claiming that lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Though the claim led to a temporary stay of execution, he has now exhausted his appeals and will likely be executed as scheduled tonight, making him the first to die for this crime and the fourteenth to be executed in Texas this year.