HUNTSVILLE — A Tyler man will be put to death for the torture and killing of a young mother Wednesday evening at Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville.
In 2000, Troy Clark, 51, was convicted in the brutal 1998 murder of 20-year-old mother Christina Muse.
Clark exhausted his final appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 and the date for his execution was set in May.
At about 6 p.m., Clark will be led from his cell on death row and be put to death by lethal injection. He will be the first of two prisoners put to death on consecutive nights, an event that has not happened in Texas in six years.
The Murder
Christina Muse had briefly lived with Clark as a roommate in Tyler before her murder. When she moved out, prosecutors say Clark believed she would tell police he had been dealing methamphetamine.
Muse visited Clark on May 19, 1998. During that visit, Clark used a stun gun to capture Muse. He then used duct tape to bind her inside a closet for several hours. Afterward, she was taken to the bathtub, where prosecutors say Clark beat Muse with a board alongside his girlfriend and later co-defendant Tory Gene Bush.
After the beating, Clark drowned Muse in the bathtub. Her body was stuffed in a 55-gallon drum with lime and cement.
Four months later, Bush helped lead police to Muse's body in a ravine off Texas Highway 64, west of Tyler. Clark's landlady owned the property.
Police also found the body of Tracy Mize floating in a septic tank on the property. Mize had been a defendant in a federal drug case and promised information on the murder in exchange for leniency. Investigators believe Clark shot Mize after finding out about his cooperation with authorities.
"When you actually are out in a field, and you see a barrel with a woman's body being taken away and a septic tank is opened up and you see another individual floating face down in it, it really grips you," prosecuting attorney David Dobbs remembered.
Trial and Sentencing
After the bodies of Christina Muse and Tracy Mize were found, Troy Clark was arrested in August of 1998 charged with capital murder. In December, a grand jury formally indicted Clark on charges of capital murder, aggravated kidnapping and murder while committing a felony. He had also been indicted on theft charges a month earlier.
Clark pleaded not guilty on all charges against him.
Pretrial hearings began in June of 1999 and the trial was eventually set for August. But after a slew of motions, including a motion to remove his attorneys and have new attorneys appointed for him, the trial was postponed. The trial was reset for January of 2000, but was again delayed until March.
The trial phase finally began on March 15, 2000.
Clark's attorneys said Tory Bush was the mastermind of the murder. However, for the prosecution, Bush was the key witness during the trial.
"She had an independent lawyer, who we were talking to," Dobbs said. "And she was willing to cooperate and give testimony and kind of throw herself on the mercy of the courts. It would have been very hard to bring [Clark to justice] without her testimony."
Bush described in detail the events of Christina's murder. She said that Clark attacked Muse with the stun gun saying, "You should have kept your mouth shut." After binding and gagging her with duct tape, Bush testified Clark kept Christina in the closet. He talked to her for awhile before playing video games and selling drugs to a customer.
Bush testified after hours of Christina being kept in the closet, she and Clark removed Christina from the closet and placed her in the bathtub. Clark asked Bush to fetch him the board with which he would use to beat Christina. According to Bush, she left the room and only heard Clark hit Christina with the board.
Bush told the jury Clark called her back to the bathroom, where she saw blood on the back wall of the tub. Clark began to fill the tub with water. He then threatened Bush to help him drown Christina in the tub.
Bush testified Clark told her to buy lime. When she returned, Clark had already begun disposing of Muse's body. The next day, Clark, Bush and three friends helped dispose of the barrel containing Christina's body in a ditch.
The friends, who allegedly had no idea idea what they were helping with, also testified against Clark.
"I have no doubt in my mind that Troy Clark killed Christina Muse and Tracy Mize," Dobbs said. "I'm not an expert on what causes this. I'm not an expert on what mitigation may have happened in his life. I just know that my job as a prosecutor for Smith County was to make sure our streets are safe. And our streets are safe without Troy Clark on them."
The jury found Clark guilty of the murder of Christina Muse.
During the sentencing phase, the state presented witnesses that testified Clark had killed another man and raped a woman among other crimes. He was not charged with any of those crimes.
Clark testified on his own behalf, against the advice of his attorneys, saying that he wished to receive the death penalty. He did not allow anyone else, including his parents, to testify on his behalf.
The jury sentenced Clark to death on March 30, 2000. The Texas State Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the judgement and sentence on mandatory appeal.
Tory Bush pleaded guilty to her role in the murder in August and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Shortly after his trial, Clark, with a new team of attorneys, filed a motion for a new trial, which was quickly denied. Clark then filed numerous appeals for more than an decade claiming his attorneys were ineffective, among other factors.
The case received considerable attention from opponents of the death penalty. Most of the opponents focused on Clark maintaining his innocence. They also claim Clark did not have access to his attorneys during the pre-trial and appellate phases of his case.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Clark's final appeal in 2017. On May 7, 2018, almost 20 years after Christina Muse's murder, the New Orleans-based 7th District Court set Troy Clark's execution for September 26, 2018.
Executions in Huntsville
Clark is one of two prisoners expected to be executed in Huntsville this week. Daniel Acker, who was convicted in the 2000 murder of his girlfriend, will be executed Thursday in the same death chamber. There are six other condemned prisoners set to be executed this year. If all executions go on as scheduled, Texas will have executed 16 prisoners in 2018. The state put seven prisoners to death in both 2016 and 2017.
Huntsville is notorious as the nation's most active death chamber. More than 500 condemned prisoners have been put to death in Huntsville since 1982, when lethal injection was first used in Texas.
Prior to the execution, Clark will be taken to the pre-execution cell Wednesday morning. The prison chaplain will spend time with Clark to hear confessions or provide spiritual guidance. The chaplain also answers questions about the execution process and helps set up phone calls from his cell.
Clark will also be allowed a shower and a change of clothes before the time of execution.
Clark will not be permitted to request a final meal. Instead, Texas serves condemned inmates the same meal served to the rest of the prison that evening. The practice of the last meal ended in 2011, after an inmate ordered a large and expensive meal and refused to eat it.
Meanwhile, witnesses for Clark and Muse will gather in separate waiting rooms and kept separated throughout the execution process. Prison officials and the media will gather in the administrative building waiting for the final confirmation for the execution to proceed.
Once that confirmation is given, the families of Clark and Muse will be escorted into two separate viewing rooms. The media will be divided between the two rooms.
At 6 p.m., Clark will be escorted from his cell and taken a short distance to the death chamber. Once inside, he will be strapped to the gurney. A licensed medical professional will begin by inserting an IV with saline solution into a vein in each of Clark's arms. One will serve as the primary IV. The other will serve as backup. The professional will have all the time they need to ensure the IVs are set.
According to state law, the names of those involved in the execution and the companies that provide the drugs will not be released.
After the IVs are set, the witnesses will be able to view Clark from the witness rooms. Clark will be allowed to make a brief final statement. After the conclusion of the statement, the warden will give a signal for the procedure to begin.
The executioner will then, by remote control, inject Clark with a lethal dose of the drug Pentobarbital. The cause of death from Pentobarbital is respiratory arrest. Until 2012, the state used a three-drug cocktail consisting of: Sodium Pentothal, Pancuronium Bromide and Potassium Chloride. The cause of death would be either asphyxiation or cardiac arrest.
Once directed by the warden, a physician will enter the chamber and confirm Clark is dead. If Clark is pronounced dead upon examination, the physician will note the official time of death.
After the execution, the body will be removed and taken to a funeral home. There, the body will either be claimed or the state will bury Clark in a prison cemetery.