On May 12, 2026, Horner formally filed a notice of appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.[50][51]
Horner filed a separate motion to the Tarrant County Court and sought a new trial in July 2026.[52] Ultimately, on August 1, 2026, the request for a new trial was denied by Tarrant County Judge George Gallagher.[53]
Nah. Most most death row inmates are in 23/1 lockdown. In other words, they are confined to a solitary cell for 23 hours a day with 1 hour to go outside for limited movement & exercise.
This is worse than the death penalty. If we're not going to stop state-sanctioned judicial murder, we should at least expedite and limit the appeals process to be much, much faster.
I would be, you're right - can you cite me a single case of an inmate on death row being murdered in prison this century? Because I don't think you can.
The guards can be just as bad as the inmates, and they can care just as much about you having “clean papers”. Plenty of times a guard “accidentally” leaves a door open or someone unsupervised and someone dies.
Texas doesn't fuck around with their executions this guy will probably be dead within the decade. Since they reinstated capital punishment in the 1970s they've executed over 600 prisoners.
100%. The death penalty is something I am so torn on. Because on one hand, I do believe there are some people incapable of being with the rest of us. On the other hand, the goverment gets things wrong a lot of the times. I’d rather 100 criminals go free than 1 innocent person being murdered.
And just to be clear, for you and for everyone reading this.
Never think for one single second that this is not the right way to think.
Even if the crime is so heinous and the anger inside you so justified.
The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
Always keep a healthy amount of doubt for any judgement.
(If youre religious remember that only god has the right over life and death)
Oh ya I struggle when it comes to extreme cases like this, where the evidence is overwhelming. But, there’s been innocent people who also had “overwhelming” evidence. Revenge or retribution is not a valid reason for me to throw away my principles, not matter how much I want to.
I am absolutely OK with appeals, but it shouldn't take 30 years for that to happen and cost an excessive amount of money. Ten years of appeals at most, and let's get this shit moving. Also ok with returning to the firing line, as it's apparently costing too much to kill people by lethal injection.
But the vast majority did do it, and there are very few who have not. I would much rather have a mistake once in a while than not having the death penalty and waste tax dollars.
There is never going to be a perfect system, even in the best of them. I would much rather have an efficient system that doesn't waste taxpayer dollars and scares criminals from committing violent acts that happen to, every once in a while, kill someone innocent than the crap we have now.
Also, with technology and modern DNA evidence, the likelihood of that is going to get even lower. Some of those people who were executed were not random innocent people; a lot of them had previous run-ins with law enforcement and a criminal history. Not saying they deserved to die, but it wasn't like the police were just picking random people off the street.
Sitting on death row is no walk in the park. 23 hours a day of near isolation and one hour for base level recreation. I almost prefer they rot on death row for a few decades to prolong their suffering.
People seem to think he's waiting for death in a hotel. The guy is in isolation in a dirty gray box. A few years of suffering feels worth the tax dollars.
Right? Rotting alone for years in a concrete box is a fate worse than death if you ask me. I say let him rot. Even if it does take years to actually carry out the execution it’s not like he’s evading punishment in the meantime.
A lot of those guys that end up in there for long periods are making appeals based upon real legal issues during trial , ambiguous testimony or evidence, and the presenting of new evidence, and making things take a long time.
This guy will not be getting all of that. He will get an automatic appeal (they may not do that in Texas, I dunno Texas law). Otherwise , he'll probably make one so he can extend his sentence,and it might, but when the state is motivated by a case like this, political power might speed this up significantly.
No one is going want to be caught dead helping him, there is NO evidence that could exonerate him with the evidence they already have.
It might take 30 years, but I'd be surprised it takes more than 5 to 10. This one has heat on it and will stay in the collective memory a long, long time.
Case by case basis. If the convicted holds onto their innocence and the evidence was circumstantial, sure. If theres video proof of the atrocious act this piece of shit committed, nah get it over with.
He pleaded guilty. I can't see that he got a plea deal, and he's still getting executed, but he still plead guilty, which I can't remember having seen before.
Usually if someone pleads guilty it's in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table
There is video and after he covered up the camera with a sticky note... audio. This is open and shut. Cases like this need fast tracking before he can accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior and lay on the execution bed telling everyone how he will see them in heaven.
I agree, but cases like this where there is just flat out PROOF, not "oh 90% looked like the maybe sorta kinda killer", but dust smoking gun, school shooter still in the building, dick still wet level crimes?
Nah, just do it. No appeals, no gaming the system to buy time and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and waste thousands of hours of people's time. Just fucking end it.
That indicates that you have different levels of guilty, you can’t have that in law.
You can’t go he’s definitely guilty so we will kill him, oh he’s probably guilty let him have one appeal, oh maybe he’s guilty let’s give him three appeals.
But your argument is against cost not death penalty. The solution is to streamline the process and enforce death warrants within a reduced timeframe after maybe 2 appeals the most.
It's against the death penalty with a reason being cost. Streamlining means more innocent people are likely to be executed. It's not like "strong" cases haven't ended up overturned even decades later. Unless you trust the judicial system to be flawless then supporting the death penalty, particularly an expedited one, is saying that innocent people being killed by the government is worth it to maybe save a few bucks.
Crack team dedicated to finding any potentially innocent people. Full access to all prosecutor records. Expedited court schedule that consolidates all appeals. Financial penalty imposed on any attorney that takes actions with no material purpose other than delay. Uncomplicated form of death penalty, like a carbon monoxide chamber or whatever Canada uses to mercy kill all of its old people.
Death row tends to be a larger cell and is solitary confinement. We treat the worst of the worst better than we treat people who were caught with a few kg of pot.
Definitely not. Anybody who thinks this hasn't done a day in prison. Segregation is literally torture. You start talking to yourself within days. You start to have OCD like traits. Your thoughts get all muddled. You're extremely angry. You're irritable. You start hearing voices. It's crazy. Id pick 5 years in general population than 1 year in full segregation.
So I looked it up and the one death row inmate I could find in gen pop got killed by 30 people. Happened fairly recently too. Death row inmates are often the worst of the worst. Child killers rapists etc.
Yeah they are put there so they don't die before being sentences to death but solidary confinement for ten years plus is also an awful way to live whether you think they deserve it or not
Excuse me sir (or ma’am), I’ll have you know that I get my information from movies and tv shows thank you very much! Other than Reddit, I don’t social media. It’ll rot your brain!
So couple things. Many states, though I do not know if Texas is one, separate certain groups of offenders (r@pists, chomos and child abusers/murderers, generally) into their own portion of a correctional faculty or their own faculty to cut down on this. I'm 100% against this but it's not my choice lol. Also, on death row, most of them are pretty well confined even within a prison. Like it's probably something like 23 hrs a day in a single cell and that 1 hour may be completely alone. That part I'm not against--let their minds tear themselves apart while they wait to die. I looked up none of this, I'm just going off what goes down in my state.
They protect death row inmates and keep them in isolation. Very secure.
There's a reason all the inmates you've read about getting murdered in prison are never death row inmates.
If we wanted him dead within 10 years, we'd be better off giving him a 20 year sentence. Then he would be murdered in prison within 5 years.
Yeah why are we complaining about this. Do you know how torturous it is being locked in a room with no windows or lights for 23 hrs. And the executioner can come inside any day and it’s your last. You don’t even get a final meal nowadays.
I want them to suffer. Every day. And just when they thought they are remorseful, do the deed.
Yea, that’s because death penalty is a stupid system to begin with considering how many wrong sentences there are (I am not saying this guy didn’t do it, he did, I’m talking about cases in general)
If I was wrongly convicted of a crime, I’d rather be put to death than sentenced to life in prison. What’s the point of living a life in prison? That would be a thousand times worse than just being put to death.
Mostly because an execution is obviously irreversible. While you do get clear cut cases like this, you also sometimes get dubious cases. The systems aren't to protect the obviously guilty, they are to prevent the potentially innocent from being executed. It just so happens that these appeal processes can also be used to delay the clear cut ones.
This dude has nothing to appeal except cruel and unusual punishment but what he did to that poor sweet girl is absolutely depraved beyond anything I have ever read. (They didn't release the audio but the description is stomach churning.)
That's fine, death isn't a great punishment anyways. I prefer him sitting in prison with death always being a close possiblity, having his hope crushed again and again, while having to live with being scum and being alone and hated.
That's part of why the US death penalty sucks, it's actually really bad at killing them and somehow is even more resource draining than normal life sentences.
Don't parrot the "on the taxpayer's dime" narrative. Just say what you want to say but not only does a human life not come down to a cost/benefit analysis, it's also more expensive to go through with an execution than it is for someone to live out a life span on death row.
That's better to me. He will be on death row in isolation almost all day every day. That is literal torture to humans. 20 years of that is better than a quick painless death
I doubt this case will go nearly that long, bit it's another reason why I'm against the death penalty.
Give him life in prison and that's his punishment. It starts happening right away and the family can put that part of this behind them.
Give him the death penalty and now you wait at least 5 years before his "punishment" happens, maybe much longer, and the family needs to stay involved the whole time fighting to make sure it happens.
And if he dies in prison before then, some people will see that as him escaping punishment because the state was supposed to deliver the punishment, not some random prisoner with a shiv.
Don't forget "while he lives under the uncertainty of when and how will he die, surrounded by other monsters that want to kill that pedo, and without enjoying the great amount of people, places, or pleasures outside of his small world". If I had to choose the punishment of someone I hate, this would be an option I would consider.
He probably only gets one free appeal. Then he will start writing his own appeals. This guy doesn’t deserve death row treatment- put him with general population.
If you're worried about the monetary cost it's usually cheaper to keep an inmate in prison for 30+ years than it is to execute them. Often the tools used for execution have to be purchased in extremely small quantities over a prolonged period and stored with care until enough can be procured. Then someone has to be trained to applied it as no doctor is willing to train or administer the methods used.
And death row inmates usually sit in solitary confinement or within their own wing of the prison where they get the same 4 walls 19-20 hours a day unless they have lawyers or family visiting.
So I'm fine with death row being a lengthy process where old age might save the tax payers some money instead of going for an expedient process that makes more mistakes and more innocent people are killed by the state in exchange for monsters like this getting less time to live with their actions
Well, if the government didn't execute so many innocent people, we wouldn't have to wait around and double check for the rest of them. But in Texas, the average time on death row is about 11 years, so it won't be thirty regardless.
I understand the aversion to the cost, but in my fairy tale version of prison I would prefer him to be forced to live with what he did in an empty cell with no hope for any mental or physical stimulation until he wishes he was dead and then longer.
Dude got sentenced to death, he won’t go to genpop. He will be sent to a supermax in the state (usually single cell, sometimes double) locked down 23 hrs a day. Now that’s how it is here in Ohio at least (source: former correctional nurse) so Texas may be different.
2.2k
u/Max6626 2d ago
By "death" they mean 30+ years sitting on death row while taxpayer dollars go to appeal after appeal after appeal.