Fifteen alleged members and associates of the Raza Unida prison and street gang were indicted in Houston, Texas for trafficking in significant quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine and possessing firearms unlawfully and during the commission of drug trafficking offenses.

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John Phillip Hernandez was one of the main members of an organization of 23 people who purchased 339 weapons in a 15-month period. At least 40 of these weapons have been recovered in Mexico and three have been found in Guatemala, according to court documents.Hernandez was sentenced after pleading guilty in July to one count of making a false statement to a federal firearms licensee.Buying weapons is legal in Texas, but the purchaser must fill out a government form that indicates whether the purchaser plans to keep the gun for himself or give it to a third party. Hernandez claimed the guns were for himself.U.S. District Judge David Hittner said Hernandez, 26, merited a stiffer sentence. “The defendant’s actions strengthened the drug cartels by arming them with arsenals that let them continue their criminal conduct,” Hittner said, and led to the killings of eight people in Mexico.

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Larry Davis, 40, was condemned to die for the murder of Michael Barrow in the Texas panhandle town of Amarillo. Barrow's parents found his body in his home after he had been beaten and stabbed to death.Texas executed a convicted killer by lethal injection on Thursday for the gang-related 1995 murder of a man during a robbery in his home.Four accomplices received lesser sentences for the slaying and prosecutors maintained Davis was the leader of the pack who directed the attack so his friends could earn a coveted gang tattoo.According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Davis was the fourth person executed in Texas and the 16th nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a temporary moratorium on capital punishment in April when it rejected a challenge to the three-drug cocktail used in most lethal injections.
Davis was executed at the death chamber in Huntsville, Texas. In his last statement, he said: "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. It is finished."
His last meal request was a hamburger with cheese and jalapenos and a vanilla shake.
Texas is America's most active death penalty state. Davis was the 409th inmate executed in Texas since 1982, when the state resumed executions six years after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment.Texas has 15 more executions scheduled for this year and one early in 2009.

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