Arizona inmate executed, state’s second in 8 days
Mar 8, 2012, 8:38 PM
Associated Press
FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) – An Arizona inmate apologized to the family of the man he killed and his own family, said his life was one mistake after another and started crying before he was injected with a lethal drug Thursday.
Robert Charles Towery, 47, convicted of killing Mark Jones while robbing his Scottsdale home in 1991, was the second inmate put to death in the state in eight days.
“I would like to apologize to Mark’s family and friends for what I did to them. I would like to apologize to my family,” Towery said. “So many times in my life I went left when I should have gone right and I went right when I should have gone left. It was mistake after mistake after mistake.”
Towery started weeping after he looked at his sister, his nephew and a friend in the room and said, “I love my family.” Then he took a few heavy breaths and appeared to fall asleep.
He became the second Arizona inmate to be injected with one lethal drug, instead of three, after prison officials discovered part of their previous supply had expired before the Feb. 29 execution of Robert Henry Moormann, who killed and dismembered his adoptive mother.
Towery’s attorneys made several unsuccessful last-minute arguments in an effort to spare him, including a request on Wednesday with the Arizona Supreme Court to reduce his sentence to 25 years to life in prison because his accomplice, Randy Allen Barker, spent less than 10 years behind bars.
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