Convicted killer of Dallas-area woman executed

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — The rage that fueled Robert Jean Hudson's fatal stabbing of his ex-girlfriend nearly a decade ago and earned him a cell on death row was gone as he quietly went to his own death.

Hudson, 45, received lethal injection Thursday night for killing Edith Kendrick, 35, at her Dallas-area home in a 1999 attack that also left the woman's young son severely wounded with his throat slashed. Evidence showed the three-time parolee became irate after calling Kendrick and hearing another man's voice in the background, went to her apartment in Mesquite, kicked in the door and started flailing away with a knife.

She was dead at the scene, stabbed six to eight times, including three wounds to her heart.

Strapped to the Texas death chamber gurney, Hudson expressed love to his wife, who is from Belgium, and a friend, who both watched through a window. Then he asked them to pray the Lord's Prayer with him in the moment before the lethal drugs were administered.

"I will take you to heaven with me," he said, adding after the prayer. "I am yours and we are one."

He never acknowledged or looked at four of Kendrick's relatives, including two of her sisters, who looked through a window from an adjacent room.

Eight minutes later, Hudson was pronounced dead, making him the 18th condemned killer put to death this year in Texas, the nation's most active capital punishment state.

The U.S. Supreme Court earlier in the day had cleared the way for his execution by rejecting an appeal that argued his trial lawyers failed to present to his jury evidence the woman's slaying was a crime of passion, reducing his culpability, and failing to inform jurors about his unstable childhood and need for medication to control his behavior and anger.

State lawyers successfully opposed the request, saying Hudson's petition presented no reasons for justices to review his case and failed to show any of his constitutional rights were violated.

Hudson had been on parole for only about six months after serving less than seven years of a 20-year term for check forgery when he was arrested for the murder. He had two other paroles and at least eight convictions, including one for a 1987 murder in Dallas for which he took a plea bargain while he already was imprisoned.

Hudson did not testify at his capital murder trial and court records show he'd asked his lawyers not to call any witnesses. At the punishment phase, defense lawyers again called no witnesses while prosecutors called a fingerprint technician to introduce evidence of Hudson's earlier convictions and a jail employee who said Hudson had exposed himself and masturbated in front of her while he was awaiting trial.

Hudson, who declined to speak with reporters as his execution date neared, told police when he was arrested that he'd lost control, was sorry for what happened and loved Kendrick.

When the knife-wielding Hudson barged into her apartment, the man who was there fled. Kendrick's 8-year-old son got between his mother and Hudson and suffered his injuries.

A witness outside in a parking lot saw Kendrick crash from the apartment to a balcony with Hudson grabbing her by the hair, then raising his arm as high as he could as he stabbed her.

Kendrick's wounded son called 911 and identified Hudson as the attacker.

Police found Hudson at a nearby convenience store. They also found in his pocket a ladies' watch and blood-spattered money, identified as missing from Kendrick's purse.

Kendrick's son required several operations to repair scars from his wounds.

Hudson's lethal injection was the last scheduled for this year in Texas, which has averaged 26 executions a year over the past decade. This year's total, while accounting for about half of the executions throughout the country, is down in part because of a de facto moratorium on the death penalty nationwide until Supreme Court earlier this year upheld lethal injection as a proper method.

At least 10 Texas inmates already are scheduled to die next year, including six in January.

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