By Darryl Coote U.S. News - UPI.com
April 24 (UPI) -- The State of Texas has executed a 41-year-old man convicted of the 2004 brutal murder of a 20-year-old mother, making Moises Sandoval Mendoza the 13th death row inmate in the United States to have their sentence carried out this year.
Mendoza was executed by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, located about 70 miles north of Houston. He was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m. EDT Wednesday, according to the state's attorney general, Ken Paxton.
"Twenty years after Mendoza violently murdered Rachelle Tolleson, robbing her 5-month-old daughter of her mother, Texas has executed him," Paxton said in a statement.
"I will always do everything in my power to defend the law and hold criminals accountable."
Mendoza was convicted of capital murder for killing Tolleson in Farmersville, Texas, on March 18, 2004.
According to court documents, that morning Tolleson was found missing by her mother, who had gone to visit her daughter only to find the infant alone on the bed.
Police were called and identified Mendoza, who was then 21, as a witness, as he had been at the residence less than a week earlier for a party.
When he was arrested, Mendoza confessed that he had taken Tolleson from her home, choked her in his vehicle until she passed out and then drove her to a field where he raped her and choked her again until she died.
The documents state he then stabbed her in the throat to ensure her death before moving the body to a remote location where it was found six days later.
Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis recounted in a statement issued after Mendoza was executed how Tolleson's murder "devastated her family and shocked our community."
"Nothing can undo what Rachelle's loved ones have endured. But justice is not about erasing the past -- it's about honoring the life that was taken," he said. "I hope tonight brings some measure of resolution to her family and friends."
Texas killed Mendoza after he exhausted all of his appeals.
The U.S. Supreme Court earlier Wednesday rejected his lawyers' petition to block their client's execution on the grounds that he was denied effective counsel in lower court proceedings.
Their argument was that an important prosecution witness, a detention officer, gave false testimony during the punishment phase of the trial, stating Mendoza had attacked another inmate. The testimony was used to portray Mendoza as posing a future threat -- one of two the conditions the jury needed to unanimously agree upon to impose the death penalty.
However, the testimony was false, the other inmate involved later admitted to being the aggressor.
Mendoza's lawyers argued that their client was provided ineffective defense by lawyers who did not challenge the narrative pushed by the prosecution.
"There is no doubt the jury was listening. During its deliberations the jury specifically asked about Mendoza's 'criminal acts while in jail,' including the 'assault on other inmate,'" his counsel wrote in the filing to the Supreme Court. "As evidenced by the jury's notes, there is a reasonable probability that trial counsel's error in failing to investigate Hinton's testimony affected the result."
The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty had advocated against the killing of Mendoza.
"In the 20 years Mendoza has spent on death row, he has transformed from an impulsive, risk-taking and self-centered late adolescent to an empathetic man of faith who has a positive influence on those around him," it said last week in a statement online.
Mendoza is the third person Texas has killed this year and the first since Richard Lee Tabler's sentence was carried out in February for murdering two foreign nationals in 2004.
Texas is next scheduled to execute Matthew Johnson, 49, on May 20.
Thirteen death row inmates have been killed so far this year, with James Osgood scheduled to be the 14th on Thursday in Alabama.
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This story was originally published April 24, 2025 at 4:41 AM.
