[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 23




TEXAS:

High court denies Texans' appeals


2 Texans on death row for separate slayings in the Dallas- Fort Worth area have 
lost appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Without comment, the justices refused Monday to review the cases of 52-year-old 
Joseph Lave and 54-year-old Juan Segundo.

Lave was condemned to die in a 1992 robbery in which 2 teenagers were killed 
and almost decapitated. Segundo was arrested nearly 19 years after an 
11-year-old Fort Worth girl was raped and strangled in her home.

Neither man has an execution date schedule.

Joseph Lave

In November 1992, 2 teenagers working at a Herman's World of Sporting Goods 
store in Richardson were killed in a brutal robbery.

Frederick Banzhaf and Justin Marquart, both 18, were bound and blindfolded with 
duct tape before their heads were bashed with a hammer and their throats were 
slashed nearly ear to ear.

Angie King, a store manager at the time, was also attacked and bound but she 
was able to free herself and called police.

Lave was 1 of 3 suspects and got the death sentence after King identified him 
as the killer based on his voice, which she said sounded like Donald Duck's.

Lave's execution date was ahalted in 2007 when the Dallas County district 
attorney's office realized evidence was not turned over to Lave's attorneys 
that included a 2nd polygraph test by a co-defendant.

Lave has remained in prison as his case made its way through the court system 
to the Supreme Court.

Juan Segundo

In August 1986, an 11-year-old Fort Worth girl was raped and strangled. Her 3 
young cousins slept through the attack after the killer removed a window fan to 
quietly slip into the room.

Her family found a note written in a dictionary in Vanessa Villa's befroom.

"Mama, take me from this place. I'm scared," the note read, according to her 
uncle Juan Carranza.

Vanessa might have been assaulted before and Segundo threatened her to keep 
quiet, so she wrote the note, he said.

2 decades later, a national DNA database matched Segundo to her slaying. 
Attorneys claimed last year that Segundo's lawyers were deficient in the 2006 
Tarrant County trial and failed to properly investigate and develop evidence 
that he was intellectually disabled, but courts have rejected that claim.

(source: Dallas Morning News)