The depraved maniac behind the 1987 rape-and-killing of a teenage girl has had his latest appeal rejected, and a date has been selected for his execution.
Ramiro Rubi Ibarra, 66, will likely be executed on March 4 2021. Ibarra has spent the last 23 years on Texas death row for the gruesome slaying of Maria De La Paz Zuniga in Waco.
Zuniga was sixteen when, while babysitting her nephews, Ibarra raped her and strangled her with a yellow electrical cord. He was a family acquaintance.
‘Of course, we are very disappointed that as of this point we have not been able to get him relief through the appellate process,’ Ibarra’s lawyer Russ Hunt Jr said.
Ibarra was initially arrested on the day the body of his victim was found, and DNA evidence from the mangled victim pointed to him. However, an improper search warrant got him off the hook until 1996, when he was arrested once again, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald.
Over the years Ibarra has tried to avoid the death sentence through numerous avenues. Initially, he claimed he was mentally unfit to stand trial. He also claimed that, since he was an undocumented immigrant at the time of his capture, the Mexican Consulate was bound by international agreement to give him legal aid. Both of these bids failed.
In 2012 Ibarra attempted to secure a life sentence instead of lethal injection by arguing that his lawyers did not demonstrate the extreme conditions of his childhood upbringing, which he believed would have convinced jurors to rethink his death sentence. This claim was also rejected.
After his murder trial, Ibarra was convicted for the sexual assault of his nephew in Bell County.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected his latest appeal, and it expected that Judge Matt Johnson of Waco’s 54th State District Court will set the March 2021 execution date.
