Published: January 10, 2007 10:41 pm      

Man executed in stabbing of 3-year-old

A New York man on Wednesday evening became the first Texas death row inmate to be executed in 2007.

Carlos Granados, 36, convicted in the stabbing death of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old son, was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m. — seven minutes after the lethal drugs began flowing.

Four more executions are scheduled in January and 14 through mid-August.

In 2006, 24 convicted killers were put to death at the Walls Unit.

Granados, who has been on death row since May 1999, expressed love to his family and others in a last statement.

His statement included a comment to Katherine Jiminez, his former girlfriend and mother the child he stabbed to death Sept. 13, 1998, in Georgetown, north of Austin.

“Kathy, you know I never meant to hurt you,” Granado said, looking at the ceiling, but never to his left, where Jiminez was standing against the death chamber window.

“I gave you everything and that’s what made me so angry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I am sorry.”

The U.S. Supreme Court last month refused to review Granados’ case. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected a request for stay of execution late Wednesday morning.

Granados was convicted of using a large kitchen knife to kill Anthony Jiminez during an argument between Granados and Jiminez, who suffered 27 stab wounds during the attack at her apartment.

Jiminez’s relatives called police Sept. 14, 1998, after she failed to drop off her son at her grandmother’s house and report for work.

Officers who went to her apartment found it locked from the inside and summoned firefighters to break it open.

Inside, police found Granados, his wrists slashed, holding a bloody knife and urging them to “Shoot me, just shoot me.”

The child was dead and his mother near death.

Jiminez, who has remarried and now has two small children, testified against Granados at his capital murder trial.

Testimony showed the stabbings were the result of an escalating argument after Granados refused his girlfriend’s order to leave.

The pair had dated before she married and had Anthony.

When her marriage ended, they began seeing each other again and he moved from New York to Texas to be with her.

At his trial, prosecutors showed Granados, who had no previous prison record, did have a history of violence, including assaulting a former girlfriend, biting and bruising a 3-year-old boy, and assaulting a relative with a beer bottle.

Scheduled for execution next in Texas is Johnathan Moore, 32, set to die Jan. 17 for the 1995, fatal shooting of Fabian Dominguez, a San Antonio police officer.



The Associated Press contributed to this report.