A Texas inmate was executed on November 9 for the murder of his mother nearly two decades ago.
The execution of Tracy Beatty took place in the evening via lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
His last words addressed his wife, “Yes, I just want to thank … I don’t want to leave you baby, see you when you get there. I love you.
Beatty went on to mention his fellow inmates, saying, “Thank you to all my brothers back on the unit for all the encouragement to help get my life right. Sunny, Blue I love you brothers. See you on the other side.”
Beatty was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time on Wednesday. He is the fourth inmate executed in Texas this year and the 13th in the country.
The 61-year-old man was sentenced to die after he was found guilty of strangling his mother, Carolyn Click, during an argument in her home on November 25, 2003.
After burying his 62-year-old mother’s body next to her trailer home in Whitehouse, located 115 miles southeast of Dallas, he used her money to purchase drugs and alcohol, according to NBC News.
Beaty was arrested on December 29, 2003, for capital murder, according to court records, and convicted in August of the following year.
Beatty had been scheduled for execution three times. On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected reducing Beatty’s death sentence or granting a six-month reprieve. On the morning of his execution date, the U.S. Supreme Court denied his lawyers’ last-minute request for a stay of execution.
Beatty’s lawyers alleged that their client has mental health issues. According to their petition, one expert who examined him determined that he was clearly psychotic and had a complex paranoid delusional belief system.
He thinks that there exists a “vast conspiracy of correctional officers who … ‘torture’ him via a device in his ear so he can hear their menacing voices,” his lawyers claimed.
Beatty’s attorneys argued that their client was being denied a complete examination to determine whether he was intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty.
The federal appeals court called the request a “delay tactic,” as NBC News reported. Furthermore, U.S. District Judge Charles Eskridge questioned why Beatty’s lawyers had not raised claims about his mental health during years of appeals.
According to an interview with CBS19 in October, Beatty claimed to be “heartbroken” about killing his mother, claiming it was an accident caused by alcohol. He thought he had knocked her unconscious until he discovered her lifeless body the next morning.
During his trial, prosecutors painted a portrait of a man who was “volatile and combative” with his mother. Lieanna Wilkerson, a neighbor, testified that Click told her that Beatty had once “beaten her so severely that he had left her for dead.”
“Several times [Beatty] had said he just wanted to choke her and shut her up,” Wilkerson said in court.
