Come Wednesday, Moises Mendoza is scheduled to be the third person executed by the State of Texas this year. The 41-year-old has spent half of his life on death row.
In 2005, Mendoza was convicted of the murder, kidnapping, and aggravated sexual assault of 20-year-old Rachelle Tolleson and sentenced to die by a Collin County jury. He’s one of 16 people the North Texas county has sent to death row since the 1970s. Prosecutors sought an execution date last year, and a judge signed the order in November.
Tolleson and Mendoza had been classmates at Farmersville High School, and, in early 2004, Mendoza attended a party at Tolleson’s home, where she lived with her five-month-old daughter. Less than a week later, on March 18, 2004, Tolleson’s mother discovered her daughter’s house ransacked and the baby alone on the bed. Mendoza was arrested on March 24 after a friend told police he’d admitted to killing Tolleson.
In his eventual confession, Mendoza told police that Tolleson agreed to leave with him and had sex with him willingly, then he choked her to death and stabbed her in the throat. But authorities didn’t buy that Tolleson left of her own volition, nor that the sex was consensual, newspaper reports show. Authorities discovered that after being questioned as a suspect, Mendoza moved Tolleson’s body to a creek bed three miles from Farmersville, then burned her remains. A man reportedly searching for arrowheads in the creek discovered the body six days after the murder.
“No matter what they read, people think I’m an animal. I’m a human being. People make mistakes. I’m not saying that justifies it,” Mendoza told the Dallas Morning News in 2005. “I know I took that little girl’s mother away … a mother, a daughter, cousin to others. I want to send them my apologies. I know it means nothing.”
Mendoza and his Atlanta attorney did not respond to requests, or declined comment, for this story.
Public support for Mendoza has been thin prior to his April 23 execution date. Multiple online petitions call for the execution to be stopped but mostly cite general issues with the death penalty.
“We oppose this execution as we do every execution,” reads a Catholic Mobilizing Network website urging people to write Governor Greg Abbott. “Capital punishment is an act of state sanctioned violence that violates the sacred dignity of every human life.”
Others recently scheduled to be executed in Texas have generated more public support. Two won at least temporary relief based on innocence claims. In October, Robert Roberson’s execution was stayed after a bipartisan group of lawmakers intervened at the eleventh hour, following weeks of high-profile outcry. David Wood, convicted of being an El Paso serial killer, was granted a stay of execution in March after a flurry of media reports and legal efforts.
Even Steven Nelson, the first man executed in Texas in 2025, had the full-throated support of his spiritual adviser and wife ahead of his date.
Mendoza’s attorneys have been quietly pushing appeals for twenty years, based on issues with his 2005 trial, including testimony presented at trial by one of the defense’s own expert witnesses, psychologist Mark Vigen, who called Mendoza’s lifestyle “depraved” and suggested he was a dangerous man.
In Texas, juries in capital cases are asked to determine whether to impose the death penalty based partly on whether the defendant is likely to pose a danger to others in the future. Mendoza’s defense attorneys argued that he would live peacefully in prison, but the state called a corrections officer who testified that Mendoza had attacked another man in the Collin County Jail while awaiting trial.
At the time, Mendoza’s trial attorneys didn’t attempt to rebut the officer’s testimony, according to appeals documents. Mendoza’s appeals lawyers later learned a contradictory story from Melvin Johnson, the prisoner Mendoza had been accused of fighting. Johnson later signed an affidavit saying he was the aggressor and Mendoza hadn’t fought back, but lawyers weren’t able to get any relief from the courts.
Mendoza’s attorneys have continued his legal battle. Earlier this month, they filed a subsequent application for writ of habeas corpus in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) that largely focuses on the allegedly false testimony regarding Mendoza’s dangerousness. They also moved to stay the execution. The CCA denied both requests on April 15.
His lawyers subsequently appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging the procedural reasons the CCA cited when refusing to consider Mendoza’s claims. The appeal asks the court to determine whether criminal defendants have the constitutional right to effective appellate attorneys, in addition to effective trial counsel. The state has argued that Mendoza’s arguments “seek a new constitutional rule of law.”
The appeal also seeks a stay of execution, but the high court has yet to make any decision. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Mendoza’s request for clemency April 21.
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