Bio 

Lorenzo Morris was born on September 25, 1952. Texas prison records list his native county as Nacogdoches County, Texas. He later worked as a laborer. Records also show that he completed 10 years of school and later earned a GED.

Before the murder of Jesse Fields, Morris already had a criminal record. In June 1976, he was sent to prison from Harris County for aggravated robbery. He received a five-year sentence and was paroled in January 1978.

Morris returned to prison in April 1982 for another robbery case from Harris County. This time, he received an eight-year sentence. He was later released under mandatory supervision and was fully discharged in September 1986.

His capital murder case began after Jesse Fields was attacked inside his Houston home. Morris later admitted attacking Fields but argued that Fields died because of later medical problems. The courts rejected that argument and ruled that the original beating and stabbing caused Fields’s death.

Murder Story

On August 5, 1990, Lorenzo Morris attacked Jesse Fields inside Fields’s Houston home. Federal court records state that Morris attacked Fields with his fists, a knife, and a hammer. Morris later admitted the attack and said it happened after Fields did not have drugs to sell him. During the assault, Morris stabbed Fields in the neck and struck him several times in the head with a hammer.

After the attack, Morris left Fields badly injured and lying in blood. He also took money from Fields’s home. Fields suffered severe head trauma and fell into a coma. He remained hospitalized for several months and was later moved to a nursing home.

Fields never recovered from the injuries. While in the nursing home, he developed gangrene in his foot. Doctors amputated his left leg to stop the infection from spreading. Fields died the day after the operation, on May 11, 1991. Court records state that he remained comatose from the day of the attack until the day he died.

Morris was arrested in March 1991 for an unrelated robbery in which a washeteria clerk was shot twice. After that arrest, he was connected to the attack on Fields. Texas prison records state that Morris was charged in Fields’s killing after the March 1991 robbery arrest.

A witness also connected Morris to the attack. According to case summaries, Morris’s girlfriend at the time, Judy Courtney, said she was inside Fields’s home and saw Morris on top of Fields with a knife while beating him. She also reported hearing Morris threaten to kill Fields and demand money.

On July 31, 1991, the State of Texas indicted Morris for murdering Fields during an aggravated robbery. At trial, prosecutors argued that the beating and stabbing caused the medical decline that led to Fields’s death. Morris argued that Fields died because of later medical issues, not because of the attack. The jury rejected that defense and found him guilty of capital murder.

During the punishment phase, prosecutors presented evidence of Morris’s criminal history, including shoplifting, resisting arrest, carrying a weapon, aggravated assault of a police officer, and aggravated robbery. The jury answered the Texas death penalty questions in a way that required a death sentence. Morris was received on Texas death row on August 3, 1992.

Morris continued to challenge his conviction and sentence through appeals and habeas proceedings. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction and sentence, and later state and federal habeas claims were rejected. In January 2004, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied his request for a certificate of appealability and affirmed the district court’s decision.

Ricky Darnell Henson was also listed as a co-defendant. Texas prison records state that Henson was received from Harris County on February 13, 1992, with a life sentence for aggravated robbery.

On November 2, 2004, Lorenzo Morris was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice lists him as execution number 332, TDCJ number 999038, age 52, from Harris County.

Morris declined to make a final statement. According to Associated Press reporting, he was pronounced dead six minutes after the lethal drugs began. Members of Jesse Fields’s family witnessed the execution, while Morris’s family visited him earlier that day but did not attend the execution.