2007: John Joe “Ash” Amador
August 29th, 2013 Headsman
On this date in 2007, John Joe “Ash” Amador died of lethal injection in Texas.
Amador, age 18, and a 16-year-old cousin, hailed a taxi in San Antonio in the dark predawn hours of January 4, 1994, directed it on a long drive to a dark street in Poteet, Texas, and abruptly shot the cabbie in the head with a .25 caliber handgun. Amador’s cousin shot the cab driver’s ride-along companion.
It’s possible to get unusually up close and personal with Amador — both the man himself, and the gears of the death penalty process at the anticlimax of 13 long years.
To begin with, journalist Dave Maass interviewed Ash Amador a month before the latter’s execution, and posted 52 minutes of audio on Archive.org.
And in a more outre vein, a team of British filmmakers crafted a surreal and digressive but frequently touching documentary of Amador’s end, most especially through the eyes of the condemned man’s wife and family. As Maass put it, they’ve “given the man one wicked afterlife.”
If that teaser intrigues, the entire documentary is freely available online here — complete with an amazing scene of a death mask being cast from the freshly-executed, just-body-bagged Ash.
On this day..
- 1929: John Fabri, condemned - 2020
- 2014: Zhou Youping, serial kinkster - 2019
- 1941: Henri Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves, the first martyr of Free France - 2018
- 1741: John Ury, schoolmaster - 2017
- 1354: Fra Moriale, condottiero entrepreneur - 2016
- 1783: William Wynne Ryland, court engraver - 2015
- 1865: Gerardo Barrios, Salvadoran statesman - 2014
- 1890: Otto Leuth - 2012
- 1541: Cristóvão da Gama, Portuguese crusader in Ethiopia - 2011
- 1938: Bela Kun, Hungarian Communist leader - 2010
- 1906: Zinaida Konoplyannikov, assassin - 2009
- 1966: Sayyid Qutb - 2008
Entry Filed under: 21st Century,Arts and Literature,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Lethal Injection,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Ripped from the Headlines,Texas,USA
I don’t care what happened in Amador’s life prior to the crime.
“Yeah, from birth, he had *18* whole years to get it together, and didn’t! Kill him!”
(disgusted) sarcasm/Off
We don’t “need” death penalty supporters “above ground”, either. But God sees fit to give them lives of any duration, just like God gives to me.
With all your “not caring”, Kevin, you miss the entire point of being human. It’s to learn compassion for other beings, EVEN IF they don’t meet up to your exacting standards.
RIP Ash
“an eye for and eye and the whole world is blind”
no one deserves state sanctioned murder – a country that kills it’s people instead of healing them is an unjust country.
Mr. Amador received what he deserved. In fact, the state did to him (justly) what he did to the cabbie. Whatever grief came to his family afterward, it was the killer’s fault. There is no other way to spin it. I don’t care what happened in Amador’s life prior to the crime. He decided to commit murder and did so. The state took his life from him. This was and is a just recompense for the now dead Amador’s act. We do not need such killers above ground.