Bio

Bill Douglas Gates was born on September 7, 1949, in Riverside, California, and worked as a welder and laborer. He had a prior criminal record in California, where he was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree robbery and assault on a peace officer, and received an additional concurrent life sentence for possession of a weapon by a prisoner. He was released on parole after serving approximately six years of these sentences before relocating to Texas.

Murder Story

On or around December 12–13, 1999, in Houston, Texas, Gates entered the residence of a 41-year-old woman. He sexually assaulted her, then strangled and smothered her to death. Gates was convicted of capital murder in Harris County on October 31, 2000, and the jury returned a death verdict on November 2, 2000. He was received into TDCJ custody on February 21, 2001.

Gates pursued state and federal habeas corpus relief in the years following his conviction, raising multiple claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. In a May 2016 opinion (Gates v. Davis, No. 15-70024), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted him a certificate of appealability on one of five such claims, specifically regarding his trial attorneys' investigation, allowing that issue to proceed on appeal. As of a February 2017 news report following a separate U.S. Supreme Court denial of relief, Gates, then 67, had no execution date scheduled.

Bill Douglas Gates died in custody on August 26, 2020, of cardiac arrest, according to TDCJ's official records of inmates no longer on death row. He was never executed.