Texas executes Lee Andrew Taylor

Lee Andrew Taylor

A member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas prison gang was put to death Thursday evening with few thoughts left unspoken.

Lee Andrew Taylor, 32, spoke candidly to his witnesses before being pronounced dead by lethal injection at 6:24 p.m. Thursday.

“There are 300 people on death row and not every one of them is a monster,” said Taylor, who was sentenced to death for killing a fellow inmate in 1999. “The state of Texas is carrying out a very inhumane and unjust situation. It’s not right to kill anybody, not the way I did it or the way it’s being done to me.

“Everyone changes right? Life is about experience and people change.”

Taylor began serving a life sentence in 1996 for one count of aggravated robbery which resulted in one fatality.

Almost three years later, Taylor engaged in a fight with fellow inmate Donta Greene at the Telford Unit near Texarkana, in what the Texas Department of Criminal Justice referred to as an incident of racial tension. Taylor stabbed Greene 15 times in the heart with a homemade weapon.

As lethal drugs were injected into his veins, Taylor looked to Greene’s family to plead his case.

“For all you people, I defended myself when I killed your family member,” Taylor said. “Prison is a bad place. I didn’t set out to kill him. But he would not have been in prison if he was a saint. I hope ya’ll understand that.”

The Aryan Brotherhood is a white prison gang with roughly 19,000 members in and out of prison. Though the gang makes up less than one percent of the prison population, it is responsible for up to 21 percent of murders in the federal prison system, according to the FBI.

Of the 469 inmates put to death since Texas resumed executions in 1982, Taylor was only the second white convict executed for killing a black person. The first was in 2003.

The victim’s family stood still as Taylor continued to speak until he was no longer able. Taylor’s mother cried repeatedly: “Oh my God, please don’t.”

The U.S. Supreme Court refused an appeal Thursday that claimed Taylor had poor legal help at his trial and in earlier appeals. The court voted 5-4 to reject the appeal just hours before Taylor was scheduled to die. State attorneys opposed the reprieve, saying Taylor had “brutally killed” people both in and out of prison.

For his final meal, Taylor requested a medium pizza with cheese, beef, black olives and mushrooms. In addition, Taylor ate four soft tacos, large bowls of fried okra and one pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream.

Taylor’s final words before he lost consciousness were directed at the victim’s family, “I hope you don’t find satisfaction in this, watching a human being die.”

This was the fifth execution in Texas this year. At least eight more will follow.

Sources: The Huntsville Item, AP, June 16, 2011

Related article:
"DeathWatch Journal for Lee Taylor – 50 days to live", Minutes Before Six, April 28, 2011

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