DAVID EARL GIBBS (EXECUTED IN TEXAS ON 23 AUGUST 2000)

            On this date, August 23, 2000, David Earl Gibbs was executed by lethal injection in Texas. He was convicted of murdering two women on July 1, 1985. Let us hear from one of the victims’ brother.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/gibbs660.htm

David Earl Gibbs

SUMMARY: David Earl Gibbs was convicted and sentenced to death for the July 1985 murder of 29 year-old Marietta Bryant. Gibbs raped and murdered Bryant and her roommate, Carol Ackland. Gibbs worked and lived at the Conroe, Texas apartment complex where Bryant and Ackland lived. Both women were outpatients of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. Gibbs confessed after his fingerprints were found at the scene and human blood found on his boots. In his statement, Gibbs stated:"While I was having sex with her, I cut her throat. I don't know why I did it." Next, he raped Bryant and slashed her throat with a butcher knife, and ransacked the place to make it look like the women were killed in a burglary. Gibbs was previously convicted of theft robbery and burglary, and on parole after early release at the time of the murders. In 1990, while in jail for Ms. Bryant's rape and murder, Gibbs was also convicted of voluntary manslaughter for killing another death row inmate, Calvin Williams. Gibbs received a 20 year sentence for that homicide.

QUOTE: Afterwards, Mickey Bryant told a reporter, "the apology doesn't cover the crime that he committed. He needed to die for that crime. But, I did appreciate the statement and the fact that in his mind, he has been forgiven as best as I understood it and I hope that's the case. The Lord will judge in the end, and whether or not he truly repented as was forgiven, in my mind, he paid the price he needed to pay. I guess if I was a vindictive person, I would think that he should die in the way that he murdered Marietta ... (but) we live in a humane society and that's the humane way to do it."

AUTHOR: Mickey Bryant whose sister, Marietta Bryant was murdered by David Earl Gibbs on July 1, 1985. David Earl Gibbs was executed by lethal injection in Texas on August 23, 2000.