Record-Setting Texas Execution Set

Tuesday, December 5th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) â€” A man convicted in the rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl awaited lethal injection Tuesday in Texas' 38th execution of the year â€” the most by any state in U.S. history.

Two more killers have execution dates this week, so the record could reach 40. Those are the last executions scheduled in Texas this year. In 1997, Texas executed 37 inmates.

Garry Dean Miller, 33, was condemned to die for the 1988 slaying of April Marie Wilson, who was raped, choked and beaten to death. Her body was dragged through clumps of cactus, then left in a clump of brush outside Abilene. A blanket and a Raggedy Ann doll were found nearby.

``I've got no mercy for this guy,'' Jones County District Attorney Gary Brown said. ``Too bad they can't draw and quarter him. Too bad they can't put him up here on the sand and skin him for a couple of days and let him be tortured like she was.''

Miller, a former bartender and laborer, confessed and then ordered his lawyers to not pursue appeals after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case. He repeatedly refused reporters' requests for interviews.

According to Michael Radelet, chairman of sociology at the University of Florida and the keeper of a database on U.S. executions, Texas' total would be the highest number of executions carried out by a state in American history.

On Wednesday, Daniel Joe Hittle, 50, is set to die for the 1989 shooting death of a police officer, one of at least seven people he is believed to have killed. The following night, Claude Howard Jones, 60, is scheduled for injection for the 1989 robbery and shooting death of a liquor store owner.

At least seven condemned killers already have execution dates set for 2001, three of them in January.