Man scheduled to die loses Supreme Court appeal

[SHANEA]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4661760.html

March 26, 2007, 11:39AM
Man scheduled to die loses Supreme Court appeal
By MICHAEL GRACZYK Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

HOUSTON — A convicted murderer scheduled to die later this year for beating his ex-girlfriend in the head with a hammer and strangling her lost an appeal Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gilberto Guadalupe Reyes, 33, is set to die June 21 for the 1998 slaying of 19-year-old Yvette Barraz. She was abducted after leaving her job as a waitress at a restaurant in Muleshoe in Bailey County, a sparsely populated county northwest of Lubbock along the Texas-New Mexico border.

Reyes is among at least a dozen condemned Texas inmates with execution dates, including two this week. Texas, the nation's most active death penalty state, already has executed nine inmates this year.

The high court refused to review the case of Reyes, whose appeals lawyers argued his legal assistance at his trial was ineffective because evidence of his inhalant abuse as a teenager, and parental neglect and abuse as a child, were not investigated and presented to the jury that convicted him of capital murder.

Court documents show Reyes and Barraz had dated for about eight months before their relationship ended about two months before her death.

Barraz's parents reported her missing when she failed to return home from work, and a day later her car was found more than 400 miles away in Presidio, on the Texas-Mexico border. Her battered body was in the hatchback area of the car hidden under some pieces of clothing.

Reyes had been stopped before dawn the previous day walking on the highway near the border crossing at Presidio, but deputies had no reason to detain him. His possible involvement in the Barraz disappearance didn't become known until after he had crossed into Mexico.

He was arrested in Portales, N.M., about three months later.

Evidence showed Barraz had been hit six times in the head with a claw hammer, had been strangled and raped. Reyes' DNA was found on the woman's clothing.

Reyes, who had been tied to a gang in Muleshoe known as the 8th Street Posse, earlier had been on deferred adjudication for aggravated assault for driving a truck into a rival gang member. His deferred adjudication was revoked when he was arrested for driving while intoxicated and was sent to a prison boot camp.