Update: The State of Texas executed Richard Tabler by lethal injection February 13. In his final statement, he repeatedly apologized to the families of the victims. “I had no right to take your loved ones from you, and I ask and pray, hope and pray, that one day you find it in your hearts to forgive me for those actions,” Tabler reportedly said from the gurney.
Richard Tabler, 45, is the second person scheduled to be executed in Texas this year, with his death by lethal injection set for February 13.
Tabler confessed to shooting and killing four people in Bell County, between Austin and Waco, in 2004. He avoided another execution date in 2010, when a federal district court stepped in to grant a stay while his lawyers petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court.
One of the big legal issues in his appeals arose shortly after Tabler was convicted, when he waived his right to a full state appeals process after he was sentenced to death in 2007. Texas death penalty cases are automatically appealed up to the Court of Criminal Appeals for review, but Tabler told a judge that if that direct appeal was denied, he’d like to be executed as soon as possible. He changed his mind months later, thinking he still had time to file a standard appeal, but by then it was too late.
Death penalty experts refer to people who forego part of their appeals in order to expedite their executions as “volunteers.” Thirty-nine people executed in Texas since the 1980s have sought to fast-track their executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. During his more than 15 years on death row, Tabler alternately fought for his right to appeal and asked for death. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear arguments in his case in October, clearing the way for his execution.
In 2007, Tabler was tried and convicted for the shooting deaths of Mohamed Amine Rahmouni and Haitham Zayed. During the punishment phase of the trial, in which the jury decides whether to impose the death penalty, the state introduced evidence that Tabler was responsible for two more murders.
According to court documents, in the early morning hours after Thanksgiving in 2004, Tabler and a man named Timothy Payne arranged to meet with Rahmouni, who managed a local bar called Teazers, with the promise of selling him some stereo equipment. Zayed drove Rahmouni to the meeting place in a parking lot around 2 a.m. that Friday.
The men weren’t strangers. Tabler and Payne met at Fort Cavazos (formerly Fort Hood), where Payne was a private and Tabler reportedly sold drugs. Tabler was an employee at the bar Rahmouni owned, per court records. According to Tabler’s confession, about a week before, he and Rahmouni had gotten into an argument. He told police that Rahmouni had threatened him, saying he had the power to “wipe out [Tabler’s] whole family for ten dollars.”
When the men got to the meeting spot, Tabler shot Rahmouni and Zayed, then dragged them out of their car. Then, in an act that was allegedly videotaped, Tabler shot Rahmouni again.
Court records further show that Tabler confessed to shooting and killing two young dancers who worked at Teazers, Amanda Benefield and Tiffany Dotson, in the days after the murders because he suspected they would turn him in. Ballistics tests later confirmed that the same gun was used to kill the two men and the two women.
Tabler was arrested that Sunday after officers brought him to the police station under the pretense of setting up a drug sting. Tabler had been working as a confidential informant with the Killeen Police Department and the Bell County Sheriff’s Department as part of a deal to avoid prosecution for passing bad checks. Officers then arrested him on the old bad checks charge to keep him at the station—as a warrant for the murder hadn’t been issued yet—he immediately offered up information about the killings.
Over several hours after midnight on November 29, Tabler wrote three separate confessions. In the first, he claimed his friend had committed the murders. In the second, he said he was there with his friend at the time. And in the third, which he wrote around 5 a.m., he said he had planned and gone through with Rahmouni’s murder and had killed Zayed in the process.
He was indicted the following February for capital murder in the deaths of both. His trial, which took place two years later, focused mostly on the punishment phase, where jurors were asked to determine whether the crime warranted the death penalty. During the five-day punishment phase, state prosecutors called 23 witnesses and presented Tabler’s written and recorded confession to the murders of Benefield and Dotson.
Tabler’s family members testified in court that his parents were neglectful and he was essentially raised by his older sister, who was seven years old when he was born. His mom and sister testified that Tabler had several significant head injuries when he was young.
Ultimately, the jury opted for the death penalty. Tabler’s co-defendant, Payne, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the crime.
In 2024, ACLU lawyers petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on Tabler’s behalf, asking the justices to consider whether Tabler’s appeals lawyers “abandoned” him by letting him waive his right to state appeals in front of a judge without themselves participating in the hearing.
According to the ACLU filing, Tabler’s defense attorneys had received a report from an expert who evaluated Tabler and determined he was “severely mentally ill” and that his ability to think was “impaired.” The report stated that if Tabler’s “overall functioning” was rated out of 100, he would score a 15. But his attorneys didn’t disclose this report, which would have cast doubt on Tabler’s competency to waive his appeals.
“The question is important because it goes to the critical role of counsel in ensuring fair administration of the death penalty, especially where capital defendants, many of whom are mentally ill, frequently change their minds about whether to proceed with their post-conviction review,” his lawyers wrote in the petition.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the argument.
