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Texas is set to execute Travis James Mullis on Tuesday, a Brazoria County man who sexually assaulted, strangled and stomped on his infant son’s head until he died in 2008.
Mullis, 38, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2011 for killing his 3-month-old son Alijah on the Galveston Seawall. Mullis fled Texas, then turned himself in to law enforcement and confessed to the crime a few days later.
His final appeal was denied by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2023. As of Tuesday morning, Mullis had not submitted any new last-ditch state or federal appeals, nor had he filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
That leaves Mullis on track to become the fourth person executed by the state of Texas this year. Two more executions in the Lone Star State are scheduled for 2024.
On January 28, 2008, Mullis drove from Brazoria County to Galveston with his son Alijah in the back seat after attempting to sexually assault a friend’s 8-year-old daughter, according to court documents.
In the early morning the next day, Mullis sexually assaulted his son. Unable to stop Alijah’s crying after the assault, Mullis proceeded to strangle his son, then stomped on his head several times and crushed his skull. He then tossed his son’s body into the brush and fled to Philadelphia.
A few days later, Mullis turned himself in to the police and confessed to the crime.
At trial, Mullis’ attorneys focused on his history of mental illness stemming from a difficult, abusive childhood. His father abandoned his family shortly after his birth, which was marred by a life-threatening illness with a mortality rate as high as 50% in newborns.
Mullis’ mother died when he was 10 months old. By at least the age of three, his adoptive father began sexually assaulting him. He spent years in and out of mental health treatment for a number of psychological conditions, including suicidal ideation.
The prosecution focused on Mullis’ history of violence and argued that the threat he posed could not be mitigated by treatment or incarceration. And Mullis’ written and videotaped confession of killing his son, according to court documents, “provided nearly indefensible grounds for conviction.”
In the years since his conviction, Mullis changed his mind repeatedly on whether to appeal his death sentence in state and federal courts. He abandoned all appeals within two months of his conviction after a court-appointed doctor found him competent to do so.
“I have always admitted guilt + justice is deserved for the victims families,” Mullis wrote in a Sept. 13, 2012, letter to the court waiving his appeals. “It is in the best interests of justice for the victim + the victims families for this appeal to stop here and execution of this sentence to be carried out in a timely manner.”
But over the course of the next decade, Mullis reinstated and revoked his appeals several more times, saying he had lied during his competency evaluation and was motivated to give up his appeals by mental illness, suicidal thoughts and “an irrational fear” of spending the rest of his life in prison.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction in 2012. Mullis filed an appeal in federal court in July 2013, arguing that he had had deficient representation at trial and alleging that the state had presented “false evidence of extraneous offenses” he had committed in his youth. The federal district court dismissed his petition in 2021, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision last year.
“Mullis is a disturbed individual whose mental illness has permeated his life,” the federal district court in Galveston wrote in denying his appeal. “As concerns about Mullis’ mental health have come up at each stage, state counsel and various courts have acted with competence and zeal to assure that Mullis has enjoyed all the process he is due.”
“However uncomfortable it may be,” the court added, “this case is left where Mullis himself has chosen it to be.”