Texas :Man Executed for Fatal 1994 Stabbing

By MICHAEL GRACZYK

August 23, 2005

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A man who fatally attacked a woman in her home with a knife and a hammer nearly 11 years ago was executed Tuesday evening. Robert Alan Shields, 30, was executed by injection while his parents and his victim's parents watched. He had no final statement. A jury condemned him for the killing of Paula Stiner, 27, whose body was found by her husband as he returned to their suburban Houston home from work in September 1994.

Shields, whose parents lived next door, was arrested three days later. According to evidence at the trial, Shields' fingerprints and bloody shoeprints were in the laundry room where Stiner's body was found.

About 90 minutes after Stiner was killed, Shields used her credit card to buy some clothes. And when he was arrested about 50 miles away, he had her car. "The world will be a better place without him, that's for sure," said Michael Guarino, the former Galveston County district attorney who prosecuted Shields in 1995. "It was an extremely vicious, brutal murder." Appeals lawyers contended Shields was trying to defend himself, an argument that was never pursued by his attorneys at trial.

They also contended a state-appointed lawyer who initially handled Shields' appeal was inexperienced and incompetent. Shields, who was 19 at the time of his crime, became the 12th Texas inmate to be executed this year. "Waiting 10 years to see justice is further offensive to the family," said John Ross, Stiner's father, after leaving the Huntsville prison.