The Ex-US Cop Who Hired a Hitman to Kill His Wife

Washington:

A former US police officer convicted of hiring the hitman who killed his wife nearly 30 years ago was executed Tuesday after a last-minute legal battle, Texas officials said.

Robert Frata, 65, was to be executed on Tuesday evening, but a Texas judge’s decision threw the planned lethal injection into doubt for several hours.

After an emergency hearing Tuesday morning, District Judge Catherine Mauzzi ruled that officers could not use the intended drug because it was “probably illegal to possess or administer because it is more likely not to expire.” “

Frata, along with several other death row inmates, filed a last-minute appeal, arguing that the use of expired pentobarbital constitutes cruel punishment and therefore should be blocked under the US Constitution.

However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had previously upheld the execution by judges, and on Tuesday it overturned Mauzy’s decision.

The southern state’s Supreme Court decided not to intervene, allowing lethal injection to go ahead.

A statement Tuesday night from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said Fratta was pronounced dead at 7:49 p.m. and had made no final comments.

Fratta had been in prison since 1994 when, according to prosecutors, he recruited an acquaintance who hired a contract killer to kill 33-year-old Farrah Fratta.

According to legal documents, the couple were in the middle of a bitter divorce and fighting over custody of their three children.

Court documents state that Robert Frata “solicited many of his friends and acquaintances to kill him or recommend someone to kill him.”

“Initially, most of his friends thought he was joking or blowing off steam, but as he kept talking about it over time, some of them believed he was serious. “

Robert Frata enlisted a man from his gym who then hired a hitman. According to US media, Fratta paid the hitman $1,000 to kill his wife.

Fratta was first sentenced to death in 1996, but the verdict was overturned in 2007 on a technicality. He was sentenced to death in a second trial in 2009.

His lawyers filed several unsuccessful appeals, even to the US Supreme Court, to halt Frata’s execution, alleging that testimony had been obtained from a witness at trial using hypnosis.

Pentobarbital is in short supply in the United States because drug companies do not want to be associated with the death penalty, they have limited production.

Fratta is the second inmate to be put on death row in the United States this year.

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