DAVID WAYNE SPENCE DIED BY LETHAL INJECTION IN 1997
Austin – The Texas Attorney General’s office requested a District Court to dismiss a suit by the son of David Wayne Spence seeking declaratory judgment that the state wrongfully executed his father for the murder of three teenagers at a Lake Waco park in July, 1982.
Assistant Attorney General Christopher Lee Lindsey in his motion to dismiss Jason Spence’s claim cited a procedural rule which provides for the dismissal of a cause of action if it has no basis in law or fact.
“A casue of action has no basis in law if the allegations, taken as true, together with inferences reasonably drawn from them, do not entitle the claimant to the relief sought. A cause of action has no basis in fact if no reasonable person could believe the facts pled,” according to the motion, which gave Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 91a as the authority for the pleading.
Spence’s suit, filed April 19 in the 345th District Court, claimed numerous reasons why the case against his father and two co-defendants, Anthony and Gilbert Melendez, was false, among them allegations that the parties involved could not have committed the murders because of discrepancies in their statements, the time line of the events leading up to the murders and the disposal of the bodies, evidentiary claims of junk science, and evidence that one of the defendants was not present in Waco at the time of the killings.