Texas executes former officer who hired hitmen to kill his wife

• Former officer executed for hiring hitman to murder estranged wife.
• Defense team argued that prosecutors withheld evidence of hypnosis.
• Execution carried out despite temporary injunction on use of expired drugs.

A former suburban Houston police officer, Robert Fratta, has been put to death via lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. He had been convicted of hiring two people to kill his estranged wife almost 30 years ago.

The murder took place in the midst of a bitter divorce and custody battle. Robert Fratta had organized the murder-for-hire plot, in which a middleman, Joseph Prystash, hired the shooter, Howard Guidry, to shoot Farah Fratta, 33, twice in the head in her garage in the Houston suburb of Atascocita.

Even though Fratta claimed his innocence, he was pronounced dead at 7:49 p.m on the execution day.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined an appeal from former police officer Robert Fratta’s lawyer to stop his execution, who had been convicted of hiring two people to kill his estranged wife, Farah Fratta, almost 30 years ago in the midst of a contentious divorce and custody battle.

Fratta’s lawyers had argued that prosecutors had withheld evidence that a trial witness had been hypnotized by investigators, leading her to change her initial recollection, which would have undermined the state’s case.

Prosecutors argued that the hypnosis produced no new information or identification, and had said Fratta had repeatedly expressed his desire to see his wife dead and had asked acquaintances if they knew anyone who would kill her.

Fratta’s execution went forward after Texas’ top criminal appeals court overturned a temporary injunction, issued by civil court judge Catherine Mauzy in Austin, which would have prevented the state’s prison system from using what she believed was expired and medically compromised pentobarbital, the drug Texas uses in its lethal injection.

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