Genes and Environment

Abstract

On December 19, 1985, Lazaro Faraga, 27, was driving from Texas to Miami with his girlfriend, Sherry Royal. In the car with them were Sherry’s 5-year-old daughter, their younger twins, and a 2-month-old infant. Just a few days earlier Faraga had been released in Dallas on a $75,000 bond for trafficking in cocaine. Near Jackson, Mississippi, the two got into an argument, apparently over the paternity of the youngest child. Stopping his car in the right lane of the interstate, Faraga first tried to push Sherry and her daughter, who was clinging to her legs, into the path of an oncoming truck. As the argument heated, truck drivers and other motorists stopped to see what was happening. Sherry got back into the car and shut the door. However, Faraga got the door open and pulled her and the infant from the car. Tearing the child from his mother’s arms, Faraga slammed it on the hood of a yellow car that had pulled over. Then he picked up the baby, raised it over his head and threw it onto the pavement in front of oncoming traffic. In terror, Sherry scooped up the child and ran to a truck that also had stopped, only to find the passenger door locked. Faraga again grabbed the infant and threw it to the pavement a second time. The baby died of multiple skull fractures and injuries to the brain. Faraga was later found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death.¹