MAN WHO KILLED 2 IN HOUSTON FACES EXECUTION TONIGHT

Death row inmate is not one to stand outWith all appeals exhausted,
Rowell will become 18th to die this year

Unlike many of his fellow inmates on death row, Robert Dale Rowell
never got much television airtime or received much newspaper ink.

The 50-year-old will walk into Texas' death chamber tonight a virtual
unknown, the 18th inmate to be put to death this year.

No public campaign has been waged on his behalf. The National
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty issued a routine alert on
Rowell's execution that does little more than lay out the facts of his case.

A last-minute reprieve is unlikely. His lawyers are not claiming he
is mentally retarded or that his trial attorney fell asleep in court.
His appeals were exhausted last month when the U.S. Supreme Court
decided not to review his case or his claim that the trial judge
should have given the jury better instructions.

"There is nothing now pending," Rowell's attorney Ed Mallett said Monday.

The trial was not even one to stand out for Kelly Siegler, the Harris
County assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case in 1994.

"The fact that he killed somebody before is probably what convinced
the jury that he needed the death penalty," she said.

Rowell was convicted of capital murder in the fatal shooting of crack
dealer Irvin Wright and housemate Raymond Mata. Angie Perez, Mata's
wife, was seriously wounded.

Much of his defense centered on his lawyers' contention that Rowell
did not rob the victims and the death penalty should not have been
available. After the jury convicted Rowell, his lawyers tried to use
the punishment phase of the trial to mitigate the crime by showing
Rowell had begun a life of drug abuse at 13.

A year later, according to court records, Rowell was injecting heroin
and taking "anything else that I could get my hands on." Soon, he
turned to robbery and burglary to support his $100-a-day drug habit,
which led to his first conviction in 1974 for assault.

He also was convicted for holdups of a drug store and a convenience
store. In 1980, he attempted to rob a restaurant, where he exchanged
gunfire with an off-duty Houston police officer. In 1982, he stabbed
another inmate more than a dozen times, claiming the other man had
made sexual advances toward him. He was convicted of voluntary
manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Rowell stayed clean for almost two years after his release from
prison in 1991. But after his introduction to crack cocaine, he told
authorities his "life deteriorated rapidly" and he was soon using an
ounce, or $500 worth of cocaine a day.

According to court records, about 4 a.m. on May 19, 1993, Rowell went
to his dealer's home in the 100 block of Red Ripple in northwest
Houston to steal his money and drugs because he felt he had been overcharged.

Perez, who testified during the trial, said she heard "thumping"
sounds as Rowell was beating the 600-pound Wright in the next room.
Rowell ordered the three into the bathroom tub where he shot them.
Mata, shot in the head, died instantly. Wright died later. Perez was
hit in the hand and the head, and told authorities she had numbness
in her leg and trouble walking.

Eleven years later, Mallett describes his client as a "reasonably
literate, very nice person."

"He has a history of being violent when confronted and under the
influence of drugs. All of his offenses are drug-related," Mallett
said. "He's aware he has an extreme susceptibility to addiction and
that he cannot control it when it's available to him."

Rowell earned his GED and associate's degree in prison.

In court records, Randy Rowell explained that he and his brother had
to be more independent as children because their mother had been on
medication most of her life. Randy Rowell did not return a phone call
seeking comment for this article.

"The whole neighborhood did drugs and once you do them, you always
want them," Robert Rowell is quoted in a 1998 report after a
psychological evaluation. "Before I did drugs, I stayed with my
grandfather and fished and I was happy."

Rowell is the first of two Harris County men sentenced to die this
week. Shannon Thomas is slated to be executed Wednesday for the 1993
triple slayings of a Baytown father and his two children on Christmas Eve.