Texas man is executed for the 2004 strangling and stabbing death of a young mother

A Texas man convicted of fatally strangling and stabbing a young mother more than 20 years ago was executed Wednesday evening.

Moises Sandoval Mendoza received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m., authorities said. He was condemned for the March 2004 killing of 20-year-old Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson.

Prosecutors say Mendoza, 41, took Tolleson from her north Texas home, leaving her 6-month-old daughter alone. The infant was found cold and wet but safe the next day by Tolleson’s mother. Tolleson’s body was discovered six days later, left in a field near a creek.

Evidence in Mendoza’s case showed he also had burned Tolleson’s body to hide his fingerprints. Dental records were used to identify her, according to investigators.

Earlier Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request by Mendoza’s attorneys to stop his execution.

Lower courts had previously rejected his petitions for a stay. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday denied Mendoza’s request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty.

Mendoza’s attorneys had told the Supreme Court he had been prevented by lower courts from arguing that he had been denied effective assistance of counsel earlier in the appeals process.

Mendoza’s lawyers had alleged that a previous appeals attorney, as well as his trial lawyer, had failed to challenge testimony by a detention officer that was used by prosecutors to persuade jurors that Mendoza would be a future danger to society — a legal finding needed to secure a death sentence in Texas.

Mendoza’s lawyers alleged the officer, who worked in the county jail where the inmate was being held after his arrest, gave false testimony that Mendoza had started a fight with another inmate. Mendoza’s lawyers said the other inmate now claimed in an affidavit that he believed detention officers wanted him to start the fight and he was later rewarded for it.

But the Texas Attorney General’s Office told the Supreme Court that Mendoza’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel had previously been found by a lower federal court to be “meritless and insubstantial.”

Regardless of the detention officer’s testimony, the jury heard substantial evidence regarding Mendoza’s future dangerousness and his long history of violence, especially against women, including physically attacking his mother and sister and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, according to the attorney general’s office.

Authorities said that in the days before the killing, Mendoza had attended a party at Tolleson’s home in Farmersville, located about 45 miles (72 kilometers) northeast of Dallas. On the day her body was found, Mendoza told a friend about the killing. The friend called police, and Mendoza was arrested.

Mendoza confessed to police but couldn’t give detectives a reason for the slaying, authorities said. He told investigators he repeatedly choked Tolleson, sexually assaulted her and dragged her body to a field, where he choked her again and then stabbed her in the throat. He later moved her body to a more remote location and burned it.

Mendoza was the third inmate put to death this year in Texas, historically the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, and the 13th in the U.S.

On Thursday, Alabama planned to execute James Osgood for the 2010 rape and murder of a woman.

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