Texas
State to execute ex-cop for hiring 2 people to kill wife
HOUSTON (AP) — A former suburban Houston police officer was set to be executed Tuesday for hiring two people to kill his estranged wife nearly 30 years ago.
Robert Fratta, 65, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection for the November 1994 fatal shooting of his wife, Farah, amid a contentious divorce and custody fight for their three children.
Prosecutors say Fratta organized the murder-for-hire plot in which a middleman, Joseph Prystash, hired the shooter, Howard Guidry. Farah Fratta, 33, was shot twice in the head by Guidry in her home's garage in the Houston suburb of Atascocita. Robert Fratta, who was a public safety officer for Missouri City, has long claimed he is innocent.
Prosecutors said Fratta had repeatedly expressed his desire to see his wife dead and asked several acquaintances if they knew anyone who would kill her, telling one friend, “I'll just kill her, and I'll do my time and when I get out, I'll have my kids,” according to court records. Prystash and Guidry were also sent to death row for the slaying.
Fratta's attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution scheduled for Tuesday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, arguing that prosecutors withheld evidence that a trial witness had been hypnotized by investigators. They say that led her to change her initial recollection that she saw two men at the murder scene as well as a getaway driver.
“This would have undermined the State's case, which depended on just two men committing the act and depended on linking Fratta to both,” Fratta's lawyers wrote in their appeal to the Supreme Court.
Prosecutors have argued the hypnosis produced no new information and no new identification.
The Supreme Court and lower courts have previously rejected appeals from Fratta's lawyers that sought to review claims arguing insufficient evidence and faulty jury instructions were used to convict him. His attorneys also unsuccessfully argued that one juror in his case was not impartial and that ballistics evidence didn't tie him to the murder weapon.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles last week unanimously declined to commute Fratta's death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant a 60-day reprieve.
Fratta also is one of three Texas death row inmates who has sued to stop the state's prison system from using what they allege are expired and unsafe execution drugs. Last week, Texas' top criminal appeals court barred a civil court judge from issuing any orders in the lawsuit. A hearing was set for Tuesday.
Fratta was first sentenced to death in 1996, but his case was overturned by a federal judge who ruled that confessions from his co-conspirators shouldn't have been admitted into evidence. In the same ruling, the judge wrote that “trial evidence showed Fratta to be egotistical, misogynistic, and vile, with a callous desire to kill his wife.”
He was retried and resentenced to death in 2009.
Andy Kahan, director of victim services and advocacy for Crime Stoppers of Houston and who has helped Farah Fratta's family during the case, said he plans to witness the execution, keeping a promise he made to Farah Fratta's father, Lex Baquer, who died in 2018. Baquer and his wife raised Robert and Farah Fratta's three children.
“I don't expect anything to come out of Bob that would show any type of admission or any type of remorse because everything has always revolved around him,” Kahan said.
The execution will be a way for the children “to continue to move on with their lives and at the very least they won't have to think about him anymore. I think that will play an important part in their healing,” he said.
Fratta would be the first inmate put to death this year in Texas and the second in the U.S. Eight other executions are scheduled in Texas for later this year.
New Jersey
Judge halts state's stricter gun carry law, for now
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Suggesting that New Jersey's recent concealed carry law infringes on the public's Second Amendment rights, a federal judge on Monday put a temporary hold on the legislation drafted after the U.S. Supreme Court expanded gun rights last year.
A legal challenge to the new law hinges in part on the argument that it effectively makes much of the state a “sensitive place” where carrying a firearm is barred. The plaintiffs argued the legislation barred carrying on private property as well.
U.S. District Judge Renee Marie Bumb seemed convinced of that argument.
“As Plaintiffs lament, the challenged provisions force a person permitted to carry a firearm in New Jersey to navigate a 'veritable minefield,'” she wrote. “Their view is a legitimate one. The Court knows of no constitutional right that requires this much guesswork by individuals wanting to exercise such right.”
In her 60-page opinion, Bumb said the plaintiffs hold valid concealed carry permits and were being deprived of their Second Amendment rights, which “constitutes irreparable injury, and neither the State nor the public has an interest in enforcing unconstitutional laws.”
Three members of Second Amendment rights groups who also have carry permits filed the suit soon after Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed the legislation just before Christmas.
Murphy's office issued a statement Monday criticizing the temporary restraining order as lacking “serious justification.”
The law stemmed directly from the U.S. Supreme Court's June decision that struck down a New York state law requiring people to show proper cause to get a carry license. The ruling affected states with similar laws, including New Jersey, where carry applicants had to show justifiable need to get a permit.
The overhauled New Jersey legislation instituted a number of changes. Among them are a requirement for permitted carriers to have liability insurance and for increased training for a permit. It also entailed a list of places where carrying a firearm would be prohibited, including schools, libraries, bars and sports arenas among other places.
Republicans, who are in the minority in the Legislature and opposed the measure, sounded a vindicated tone.
“The federal judge's ruling, which validates what we have been saying, is a victory for the 2nd Amendment and the rights of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves both in public and in private. We look forward to the offending provisions of the law being permanently struck down,” Senate Republican Leader Steve Oroho said in a statement.
Democratic Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin called the legislation's provision's “common sense” and added in a statement that he was disappointed in the opinion.
Democratic Senate President Nicholas Scutari called the decision a first step in a long process. “We remain confident that the law is constitutional,” he said in an emailed statement.
