Man convicted in shooting death of deputy gets death penalty

ATHENS, Texas — A man convicted of killing an East Texas deputy in a shootout that claimed two law enforcement officers was sentenced to death Tuesday.

Randall Wayne Mays, 48, was sentenced by the same jury that convicted him Friday on a capital murder charge. His brother, Noble Mays Jr., was executed in 1995 for the fatal stabbing of a Good Samaritan who agreed to help him with a disabled car.

Henderson County sheriff's deputies Tony Price Ogburn and Paul Steven Habelt died and a third deputy was injured last May in a shootout at Mays' house in Payne Springs, about 50 miles southeast of Dallas.

They were responding to a domestic disturbance call made by a neighbor who reported hearing gunshots on Mays' property. After appearing to cooperate with the deputies, Mays barricaded himself inside his house, where he used a high-powered rifle to shoot at officers.

Mays was convicted in Ogburn's death.

"Sadly, we lost two of Texas' finest on that awful day," state Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a statement. "Our only hope is that today's sentence and the conclusion of this trial bring closure for the community and the families of the victims."

Mays and his brother, Noble, are not the first set of brothers to wind up on death row in Texas.

Jose Gutierrez was put to death in 1999, five years after his brother, Jessie, received lethal injection. Both were convicted of killing a College Station jewelry store clerk in a 1989 robbery.

Earlier, Curtis and Danny Harris were executed in July 1993 for beating and robbing a motorist whose car had broken down on a Brazos County road in 1978.

In the days when the electric chair was the method of capital punishment in the state, at least four sets of brothers were put to death, the first in 1925, the last in 1938.

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