Texas Executes John Allen Rubio, 46, for 2003 Murders of 3 Children

Q: After his first conviction was overturned, how did a second jury ultimately decide the fate of a man claiming to fight demons?

After his first conviction was overturned, a second jury in 2010 again rejected John Allen Rubio’s insanity defense, found him guilty of capital murder, and sentenced him to death. Rubio had claimed he killed the three children because they were possessed by demons and that he was the “chosen one” meant to save the world. At retrial, defense experts said he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and pointed to a childhood marked by violence, drug use and severe dysfunction. Prosecutors countered that assessment with their own experts and argued Rubio was legally responsible for the killings. The retrial became necessary after an appeals court threw out Rubio’s earlier conviction, ruling that out-of-court statements by Angela Camacho, his common-law wife and co-defendant, had been improperly admitted at the original trial. Camacho later pleaded guilty and received a life sentence. Despite Rubio’s renewed not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity plea, the second jury sided with prosecutors. That verdict and death sentence remained in place through years of appeals, including later claims that Rubio was incompetent to be executed because of long-standing mental illness. Courts ultimately rejected those arguments, and Texas carried out the execution nearly 23 years after the murders.

3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Nov 13

John Allen Rubio was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. in Huntsville, 21 minutes after a lethal injection began, nearly 23 years after the killings in Brownsville.
Rubio, 46, was convicted of stabbing and beheading three children he helped raise — Julissa Quezada, 3, John Esteban Rubio, 1, and Mary Jane Rubio, 2 months old.
Court records said Rubio claimed the children were possessed and cast himself as chosen to save the world; defense experts diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, but prosecution experts disputed that.
Angela Camacho, Rubio’s common-law wife and the children’s mother, pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence for her role in the 2003 murders.
Rubio’s execution was the second in the U.S. on Thursday, hours after Oklahoma executed James Pavatt, as California’s governor moved to commute all 548 state death sentences.