Convicted Murderer Calls Media Hour Before Execution in Texas

A man who fatally shot a convenience store clerk worried about his victim’s family in the moments before he was executed by injection Wednesday evening.

“What I want to say is I have remorse and I’m really sorry about what happened to that family,” John Satterwhite, 53, said in a telephone call to Associated Press less than an hour before he was strapped to the Texas death chamber gurney for killing Mary Francis Davis, 54.

Satterwhite declined to make a final statement in the death chamber and was pronounced dead at 6:29 p.m.

Prison officials generally allow an inmate a few final calls to relatives preceding an execution, but a call to the media from a prisoner is unprecedented.

“I wanted them to know that I hope my remorse does them good. But would it help them any? No,” Satterwhite said in the phone call.

Satterwhite already had been arrested eight times and had served a prison term for burglary and robbery by assault when he was charged with the March 12, 1979, killing of Davis after walking into the Lone Star Ice and Food Store in San Antonio under the guise of buying a pack of cigarettes and a soft drink--a 79-cent purchase.

Davis was found seated on a toilet, a bullet through each temple.

“I wouldn’t say I’m totally innocent,” Satterwhite said from death row. “I’m guilty of some things.”

Asked about the shooting, he replied: “There’s a possibility I could be the person that did it. . . . I can’t say I did or didn’t.”

Satterwhite was the third of six condemned killers scheduled to die this month in Texas and the 29th this year in the nation’s busiest death house.

At least 11 other death row inmates have lethal injections set through the end of 2000, which could wind up a record year for executions in Texas, topping the 37 condemned prisoners put to death in 1997.