Unless a federal appeals court steps in at the last minute, San Antonio dope head TaiChin Preyer is set to be executed shortly past six tonight for the 2004 murder of his drug dealer, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Police say Preyer stabbed and slashed Jami Tackett, 24, in her apartment on Goliad Road in a bungled attempt to rob her.
In fact, Preyer was arrested when he dropped his car keys while running out of the apartment, and returned to look for them. Police found Tackett's blood on his clothing, and Rico Valdez of the Bexar County District Attorney's office say the victim fingered him in a dramatic dying declaration.
"Her almost literally dying last words were identifying TaiChin as the murderer," he said.
Public Defender Cate Stenson, who is Preyer's attorney now, says the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals needs to step in and stop the execution on the grounds that he had inadequate representation at his 2005 trial.
She says one of Preyer's lawyers was a California based real estate attorney who boned up on capital cases by reading 'Wikipedia.' His other attorney had been disbarred twenty years earlier."If you've got that combination of lawyer and disbarred lawyer putting plainly deficient arguments in front of a judge, that amounts to a fraud on the court."
Stenson says Preyer's lawyers failed to to the most basic work expected to attorneys representing defendants on trial for their lives, including examining his childhood.
"We're talking pretty horrific instances of abuse, including an incident where his mother actually chased him with a knife until he jumped out of a fourth floor window and broke both of his ankles."
Valdez says previous district attorneys have tried to work to resolve these concerns.
"We even agreed to withdraw the original execution date to give them more time to file their pleadings, and, unfortunately, as is typical in these cases, they literally wait until the days before the execution to bring the litigation."
Several previous courts, including the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles early this week, have declined to step in and block tonight's execution.