Courts - Texas High school girl's convicted killer set to die Man is among at least 11 Texas prisoners set to die over next three months

By Michael Graczyk Associated Press Writer LIVINGSTON, Texas (AP) -- Eighteen-year-old El Paso high school senior Sophia Martinez pulled up to the drive-thru ATM to withdraw $20 for spending on a Friday night. A man dressed in black jumped into view and shot out the passenger side window of her new red 2000 Pontiac Grand Am, wounding her in the face. Then he climbed into her car and forced her to withdraw $200 from the machine at the Government Employees Credit Union branch before they drove off together. Two days later, Martinez's body was found in the desert about 10 miles away. She had been shot in the head five times and there was evidence she had been raped. William Josef Berkley, a self-described marijuana-smoking baggy-jeans-wearing "sarcastic smart ass" who denied involvement, was condemned for her March 2000 slaying and scheduled for execution Thursday evening in Huntsville. "I'm not sure exactly what happened," 31-year-old Berkley told The Associated Press recently from a small visiting cage outside death row. "I wasn't there." The U.S. Supreme Court last year refused to review his case. Attorneys returned to the federal courts this week to try to put off his lethal injection, which would be the sixth this year in the nation's busiest capital punishment state. A surveillance camera caught the robbery on tape and showed a man prosecutors said was Berkley forcing his way into Martinez's car. The tape then showed Martinez making the additional withdrawal and driving away with the man. "They had picture from a video cam ... a bad picture," recalled Frank Macias, who was Berkley's lawyer at his 2002 trial, said. "It was a profile view, and even though he had a cap on, it was difficult to refute. "I remember that picture." So did jurors, who convicted Berkley and decided he should be put to death. "There's no doubt," Jaime Esparza, the El Paso district attorney who prosecuted Berkley, said. "There was a lot of evidence." Besides the photo, prosecutors had DNA evidence showing Berkley had sex with Martinez. Berkley insisted the sex was consensual because he and Martinez had been friends for several months. "She was a cool chick," he said from prison. Esparza said there was no evidence indicating Martinez knew him. The victim's sister, MaryAnn Martinez, called Berkley's declaration "absolutely ridiculous." "We knew who she would date," she said. "There was no reason she would hide it." Berkley contended he and a friend, Michael Angelo Jacques, then 24, intended to commit a robbery the night Martinez was killed and that he wanted to break into a house where they knew cocaine was present. Their plans got sidetracked when Berkley said he "got picked up by four girls" and went off with them. "I had a dime bag of weed," Berkley said. "I used to get high all the time. I was hitchhiking. They picked me up." He couldn't provide them as an alibi because he said he only knew their first names. It was seven months before he was arrested and by then Martinez's unknown killer had become El Paso's most wanted man, commanding a $50,000 reward for information leading to his conviction. Jacques, accused of planning the robbery and hiding evidence, now is serving life in prison. Evidence showed it was Jacques' wife who went to the FBI with information that led to their arrests. Berkley was picked up at his parents' home, then "signed everything I was told to sign," he said, including a pair of confessions he said he couldn't read because he didn't have his eyeglasses. "I signed," Berkley said from prison. "I trusted the cops." Esparza, however, said Berkley volunteered to provide a second statement where he talked extensively about his version of how the slaying occurred. "I shot her," Berkley said in the six-page statement. "I just kept firing. I continued to fire the gun after she fell to the ground." Police found Martinez's car keys on the roof of an apartment building where Berkley and Jacques were living in March 2000. Martinez's mother, Lourdes Licerio, told the El Paso Times that Berkley's execution would ease the hurt of losing her daughter but could not bring it to an end. "It's an awful feeling knowing that someone would cause so much pain to one of your children," she said. On death row, Berkley is known as "Ghost," a nickname he picked up from his German-born mother after a popular TV cartoon character in Germany, where he was born and his father was posted with the U.S. Army. His family moved to El Paso when he was in the fourth grade. The 10th-grade dropout said he had intended to join the military but that those plans were scrapped when at 17 he fathered a child, now 13. "In a way, I'm scared of death, but in a way, I'm not," Berkley said. "You know it's coming. ... I've tried to prepare myself for it. We all have an execution date." Berkley is among at least 11 Texas prisoners set to die over the next three months. Scheduled next is Samuel Bustamante, 40, facing execution Tuesday for the fatal stabbing of a 28-year-old man, Rafael Alvarado, during a robbery in Fort Bend County, southwest of Houston. Published: Thu, Apr 22, 2010

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