Execution date set for East Texas man convicted of killing two sheriff’s deputies

An East Texas man convicted of killing two sheriff’s deputies in a 2007 stand-off is scheduled for execution in October, prison officials confirmed Monday.

Randall Wayne Mays was sent to death row in 2008, months after a shoot-out that left dead two Henderson County sheriff’s deputies, Tony Ogburn and Paul Habelt

The violent outburst began on May 17, 2007, when Mays and his wife started arguing over her claim that she’d been gang-raped.

A neighbor called 911, and when police showed up and started reading Mays his rights, he fled and barricaded himself inside the couple’s home. Shouting to officers outside the building, Mays “incoherently jabbered about being poisoned,” according to court filings.

In the end, he shot three lawmen, wounding one and killing the other two. At trial, there was little question as to his guilt; Mays’ defense attorney told the court he already knew what the verdict would be. And indeed, the jury took less than an hour to find him guilty.

Afterward, during the punishment phase, his lawyers argued that he suffered from mental illness – including psychotic disorder, paranoid delusions and hallucinations – and that he might have permanent brain damage from chronic meth use, according to court records.

During the appeals process, his attorneys claimed he was too intellectually disabled to be executed, that he’d suffered from shoddy lawyering earlier in the case and that he was severely mentally ill.

At one point, he was scheduled for execution in 2011 – but a federal judge stayed the date with death in light of pending litigation.

Four years later, he was again slated to die when he won a last-minute stay from a Texas appeals court over concerns about whether he was mentally competent to be executed.

Afterward, the  local trial court held a hearing on the matter, but in the end the courts came out against him – and this month a judge greenlit an Oct. 16 execution date.

So far, three men have been put to death in Huntsville this year, including Houston cop killer Robert Jennings and notorious white supremacist John King, one of the men behind the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in East Texas.

There are at least six other executions scheduled for the remainder of the year, including that of convicted Harris County killer Dexter Johnson, a brain-damaged man who has long declared his innocence.