Bio

Joe Franco Garza Jr. was born on August 21, 1971, and worked as a laborer in Lubbock, Texas. As a juvenile, he had prior adjudications for burglary and arson, and had previously been belligerent toward a police officer during a traffic stop involving a stolen car. As an adult, he was convicted of burglary of a habitation in 1992, receiving a nine-year sentence; he was released on parole later that year, returned to custody in 1993 as a parole violator, and was ultimately released to mandatory supervision on January 30, 1998. At the time of the murder, he was 27 and had a relationship with a 13-year-old girl who was pregnant.

Murder Story

On the night of December 31, 1998, Garza was drinking at his cousin's house when someone there called 71-year-old Silbiano Rangel, a family acquaintance, and asked him to come over. Rangel gave Garza and his cousin a ride to a liquor store to buy beer, but when they arrived, they realized they had no money. Rangel then drove them to the home of a friend so Garza's cousin could try to borrow some cash.

While she was inside, Garza, seated behind Rangel in the truck, strangled him with a sock. When his cousin returned to the vehicle, Garza forced her to help him move Rangel's body into the truck bed. He took Rangel's wallet, jewelry, and truck, dropped his cousin off at her friend's house, and drove to the home of his 13-year-old girlfriend, lying to a friend of Rangel's who noticed the truck and asked about him.

Garza then woke his girlfriend and drove her with him to Dallas in the stolen truck, stopping along the way to pawn one of Rangel's rings and make purchases using Rangel's stolen checks. Once in Dallas, he gave or sold the truck to a stranger and borrowed money from a friend before he and his girlfriend returned to Lubbock by bus. 

Afterward, he bought a newspaper to check whether Rangel's death had been reported. Rangel's body was discovered the following morning on the side of the road in the 7300 block of King Avenue, the sock still tied around his neck; a medical examiner found injuries consistent with a struggle and blunt force trauma to his face. Garza was arrested less than a month later.

Garza was convicted of capital murder in April 2000 and sentenced to death on April 18, 2000. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction and sentence on direct appeal in 2002, and his state habeas corpus petition was denied in 2003. He then sought federal habeas corpus relief, arguing his trial attorneys had been constitutionally ineffective for failing to investigate and present available mitigating evidence about his troubled upbringing during the original punishment phase. In August 2005, a federal district court in Lubbock agreed, vacating his death sentence and ordering Texas to either hold a new punishment hearing or impose a life sentence.

Following a new punishment hearing, a jury again recommended death, and Garza was resentenced on April 24, 2006. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed this second death sentence in 2008, considering fourteen points of error, including a claim regarding a juror's apparent lack of understanding of key legal terms used during jury selection, and finding them all without merit. 

Garza's subsequent appeals continued for years afterward, with the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately declining to review his case around 2015; his lawyers had argued his original trial judge failed to consider all available evidence and that his trial attorneys had improperly prevented him from testifying and failed to challenge evidence that he was a member of a prison gang.

An execution date was set for September 2, 2015, but the execution did not proceed. Joe Franco Garza Jr. was found dead in his cell at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, on December 29, 2020, at age 49, before any execution was carried out against him.