Texas executes convicted cop killer

In Huntsville, defiant to the end, a former federal drug informant who aspired to be a CIA agent was executed Tuesday for killing a Houston police officer 13 years ago. "In killing me, the people responsible have blood on their hands because I am not guilty," Craig Ogan said in a deliberate and firm voice.

He described the details that preceded the officer's death and, as he has in the past, essentially blamed slain Officer James Boswell for the officer's death.

Ogan said Boswell was a "police officer who was out of control." Ogan complained that the courts ignored what he said was evidence of "police and prosecutorial perjury."

Without looking at relatives of the slain officer, who watched through a window a few feet away, he alleged that Boswell was angry and was still suffering from an on-the-job injury months before.

As he paused briefly trying to collect his thoughts, the lethal drugs kicked in and Ogan snorted and coughed. He was pronounced dead at 7:13 p.m. CST, eight minutes after the lethal dose began.

Ogan, 47, from St. Louis, had been in Houston only a few weeks when he fatally shot Boswell the night of Dec. 9, 1989.

 "I killed a cop and this is Texas," Ogan said recently from death row, insisting the shooting was in self-defense but acknowledging he had little hope of avoiding lethal injection in the nation's most active death penalty state.

 Several dozen police officers and police supporters arrived on motorcycles shortly before Ogan's scheduled execution hour and stood down the street from the prison entrance.

 "It's time," said Morgan Gainer, who was Boswell's partner the night of the fatal shooting. "That's all."

 "I really don't don't know how to express my feelings," added Sonny Boswell, the officer's father. "I want justice, but I don't want it to sound like revenge."

 Boswell said he declined to go inside to watch Ogan die and preferred to be with Gainer and the others, many of them holding pictures of the slain officer.

 "I wanted to be outside with his buddies," the father said.

 "A lot of people say that in Texas they really use that death penalty a lot," said Larry Standley, one of the prosecutors at Ogan's trial. "But I truly believe if somebody will do that to a cop that quick, just think of what they would do to just anybody else."

 The execution was delayed for nearly an hour while the U.S. Supreme Court considered a pair of 11th-hour appeals that questioned Ogan's competency and mental health.

 "They're trying to sell me as a nut case," Ogan said of his attorneys' efforts. "I don't appreciate that."

 Ogan was fascinated with espionage, spoke several foreign languages and longed for a job with the CIA. He said he was building a track record by working as a confidential informant in St. Louis for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

 He moved to Houston in late 1989 because he feared his cover had been exposed. The night of Dec. 9, 1989, he got into an argument with a motel clerk, walked outside and spotted a police car where Boswell and his partner were writing a traffic ticket.

 Ogan interrupted the officers repeatedly, citing his DEA connection, and refused their instructions to wait a few minutes. When he persisted and Boswell got out of the patrol car to unlock the back door of the car, the officer was shot in the head. Ogan tried running away but surrendered after he was shot and wounded in the back by Boswell's partner.

 Ogan blamed Boswell for the shooting and contended his reaction was in self-defense.

 "He went crazy," Ogan said. "This doesn't make sense. I'm pro-police. If I wanted to kill a cop, I could have blown them both off."

 Ogan had an "explosive temper and a short fuse," said Standley, now a Harris County judge. "He was just a time bomb, and that's what happened that night."

 Ogan contended he was calm, polite and feared for his safety.

 "He was my son's judge, jury and executioner in a split second," Martha Boswell, the officer's mother, told the Houston Chronicle.

 She noted Ogan had appeals and had sought a reprieve and a commutation.

 "As far as mercy -- he showed Jim no mercy. None whatsoever," she said.

 A defense psychologist testified at his trial that Ogan suffered from functional paranoia, frequently was anxious, agitated and fearful, and believed the officer was a deadly threat to him.

 Jurors didn't buy the self-defense argument, convicting him of capital murder and then deciding he should be put to death.

 Ogan had no previous prison record but did acknowledge involvement in drug dealing.

 Wednesday, William Chappell, 66, condemned for a 1989 shooting spree that left 3 people dead in a Fort Worth home, was scheduled to die. Chappell would be the oldest person put to death in Texas since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982.

 Ogan becomes the 30th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 286 since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982. Ogan becomes the 47th condemned inmate to be executed since Rick Perry became governor in 2001.

 Ogan becomes the 59th condemned inmate to be put to death in the USA this year and the 808th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977. 

Texas executes man who killed ploiceman in 1989

HUNTSVILLE, Texas, Nov 19  - Texas on Tuesday   executed a man who shot to death a Houston police officer nearly 13 years ago, in the first of two execution scheduled for this week.

Craig Ogan, 47, was put to death by lethal injection for the Dec. 9, 1989, shooting death of James Boswell.

A former U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency informant, Ogan's execution was delayed for about an hour as the U.S. Supreme Court considered and turned down a last-minute appeal.

In his rambling final statement, Ogan blamed Boswell for his own death, and suggested that he had evidence of a cover-up proving Boswell had suffered a head injury that caused him to be "filled with anger."

"I am  not guilty. I acted in self-defense and reflex in the face of a police officer who was out of control," Ogan said during his statement, which was witnessed by Boswell's mother and four siblings.

Ogan shot Boswell after running up to his patrol car, stating that he was a DEA informant, and demanding the officer's immediate attention. He continued pressing Boswell, who got out of the car and began unlocking the back seat, at which point Ogan shot him in the head.

  "Officer Boswell was angry at the time I walked up. Officer Boswell may have reacted to the ..." Ogan said before prison officials cut off his statement and the lethal drugs began flowing.

"We had told him that he was given two minutes, and not to do a filibuster and to give us a signal when he was done, and he didn't," Texas prisons systems spokesman Larry Fitzgerald told Reuters.

Ogan, from St. Louis, Missouri, was the 30th person put to death this year in Texas, by far the nation's most active death penalty state. He is the 286th inmate executed in Texas since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982, six years after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a national death penalty ban.

He requested no final meal.

On Wednesday, Texas is set to execute William Chappell, 66, for a 1989 triple murder in Fort Worth. He would be the oldest person executed in the state since it resumed executions.