EXECUTED

Joseph Bennard Nichols
Executed: March 7, 2007 06:19 p.m. CST by Lethal Injection in Texas

Summary: Nichols and Willie Ray Williams drove to Joseph’s Deli in Houston. Both men were armed and pointed handguns at deli employee Claude Shaffer, Jr., who was behind the counter. When Shaffer saw the guns he began to bend over or squat down, both Nichols and Williams opened fire. Nichols and Williams ran to the door and Nichols went out. Williams turned and fired once more at Shaffer then went behind the counter and grabbed the deli’s cash box, then ran out of the deli.Nichols and Williams then joined accomplices Charlotte Parker and Evelyn Harvey in a waiting car and drove away. Nichols told Parker and Harvey “he had shot the man” and “he thought he shot him in the chest,” and that Williams said he had run back into the deli and shot the man again. Shaffer died from a single gunshot wound. Nichols was on felony probation for Theft at the time of the murder and evidence was also presented that he had engaged in a string of robberies just before the murder. Accomplice Willie Ray Williams was also sentenced to death in a separate trial and was executed in 1995.

Final/Special Meal: Declined.
Final Words: When the warden asked Nichols if he wanted to make a last statement, he answered, "Yes, yes I do." He then mentioned a supervisory corrections officer on death row by name and uttered a string of obscenities about her. Then he said, "That's all I got to say."