‘MISOGYNISTIC AND VILE’

Texas Executes Ex-Cop Over Murder-for-Hire Killing of Estranged Wife

Despite a judge’s concern about the viability of lethal injection drugs that were “more likely than not expired,” Robert Fratta’s execution was carried out on Tuesday evening.

After more than a quarter-century spent on death row, former police officer Robert Fratta was executed by the state of Texas on Tuesday evening. He was 65. In 1996, Fratta was found guilty of orchestrating a plot to hire a hitman to kill his wife, Farah Fratta, with whom he was reportedly locked in a bitter divorce. His conviction was later overturned, though the judge noted that Fratta had been proven to be “egotistical, misogynistic, and vile.” He was retried in 2009, and resentenced to death. A last-minute legal scuffle over the validity of the drugs used in the state’s lethal injection cocktail nearly derailed the execution, with a district judge agreeing that the barbiturates were “more likely than not expired.” A criminal appeals court tossed out the ruling, however, clearing the way for the state Supreme Court to order to execution to go on. Fratta offered no final words. Andy Kahan, the director of victim services for Crime Stoppers Houston, said that Fratta had chosen “the coward’s way out” in failing to acknowledge his son and brother-in-law, who watched the execution. “He could have said ‘I’m sorry,’” Kahan added.