John Battaglia, convicted of killing his two young daughters in 2001 while their mother listened helplessly over the phone, was executed via lethal injection in Texas on Thursday. The execution came after a federal court that had twice forestalled the man’s execution shot down a last-minute appeal filed by Battaglia’s lawyers.
According to court records, the former accountant-turned-murderer ostensibly remained convinced until the very end that a conspiracy involving “the KKK, child molesters and homosexual lawyers” led to his conviction in what he deemed a “sham trial.”
Battaglia’s attorneys argued that the man suffered from a severe persecutory delusion, and that their client’s tenuous grip on reality made him mentally unfit to face execution. They also stated that the other two executions Texas carried out this year were “botched” and “torturous,” requesting that the execution be delayed so as to minimize the risk of their client suffering cruel and unusual punishment, The Texas Tribune reports. (RELATED: Supreme Court Stays Execution Of Alabama Death Row Inmate)
Evidently, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.
John Battaglia appears in a police booking photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice March 29, 2016. Texas Department of Criminal Justice/Handout via REUTERS
On Thursday morning, the court rejected an appeal filed by Battaglia’s attorneys alleging that a lower court unjustly deprived Battaglia of a mental competency evaluation. The same appellate court had twice delayed the 62 year old’s execution as a result of similar motions, mandating that Battaglia be provided a mental competency evaluation to judge whether or not he was mentally fit to face execution.
Prosecutors said Battaglia had been divorced from his former wife, Mary Jean Pearle, for approximately one year when he killed Mary Faith, then 9 years old, and Liberty, then 6 years old, according to Reuters. At the time of the shooting, Battaglia’s ex-wife was attempting to have him arrested for threatening her in violation of a protective order she had obtained in the wake of a physical assault.
Court documents indicate that on that day, minutes before a scheduled visit with his daughters, Battaglia received a phone call from a police officer. The officer told Battaglia to surrender himself to authorities for violating probation, asking him to turn himself in so that police would not have to make a scene in front of his daughters.
When the two girls arrived at Battaglia’s apartment, Battaglia brought them inside his loft and left a message on his ex-wife’s phone. When she called back, he put her on speakerphone and told her to speak with her daughters.
Mary Faith asked her mother, “Mommy, why do you want Daddy to go to jail?”
Seconds later, Pearle heard the daughter pleading for her life, saying, “No, Daddy, please don’t, don’t do it.”
The mother then heard screams and gunshots, followed by Battaglia cursing and shouting at her. Pearle called the police immediately, and responding officers found that both girls had been fatally shot multiple times at close range.
Following the slaughter, Battaglia left the scene of the crime and spent some time at a bar with his new girlfriend. Reuters reports that police found and arrested Battaglia at a tattoo parlor, where court documents indicate he was getting a rose tattoo on each forearm to remember his slain daughters, Newsweek previously reported.
After Battaglia was arrested and indicted, a jury found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder after spending only twenty minutes deliberating.
Battaglia was the third prisoner to be executed in the United States this year, according to BBC News. All three executions were carried out in Texas. (RELATED: Tennessee Set To Resume Executions After Nine-Year Hiatus)