JUST IN: Texas Executes Christopher Young After 14 Years on Death Row — “I AM SORRY I DID IT” 

And I just wanted, I really haven’t ever had chance to really apologize to my family, either. Because although I thought I was being protective of them, I really hurt them, too. And so, I want to apologize to them, too. None of that was intentional. Uh of course, I had numerous family members tell me to sit my ass down somewhere and didn’t listen to them.

And I I should have. But I think they’ll appreciate who I am now. And that’s what I really want to like show people how a person can change, can grow up and mature. And so, like although I do apologize for putting them through this stress, I hope they can appreciate where I am now. >> On July 17th, 2018, Christopher Young was scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas.

He had been on death row for 14 years. In 2004, Young walked into a San Antonio convenience store and shot the owner, Has Muk Patel. The shooting had been captured on a surveillance camera, and when police arrested Young shortly after, they found the murder weapon still in his possession. He was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.

For years, that seemed to be exactly where the story was headed. The appeals were moving through the courts, the execution date was set. Then something changed. 14 years after the murder, Mitesh Patel, the son of the man Young killed, decided he did not want to see him executed. He began actively asking the state of Texas to spare his father’s killer, and he was not doing it because he believed Young was innocent.

 He knew exactly what Christopher Young had done. He had spent years living with the trauma and the loss of his father. Yet, with an execution date only days away, Mitesh asked the state to let Christopher Young live. That request started a final legal fight involving the Texas Parole Board, the governor, and the federal courts.

And with only days left before the execution, Young’s lawyers would make an argument that could decide whether he stayed on death row or walked away from the execution chamber with a life sentence. The question was no longer whether Christopher Young had committed the murder. Everyone involved in the case knew he had.

 The question was whether the man sitting on death row in 2018 was still the same man who had walked into that San Antonio store in 2004. And whether race had played a role in the state’s decision to deny him mercy. Hasmukh Patel, the victim, known to almost everyone in the neighborhood as Hash, was a 53-year-old business owner. For many years, he had operated a local dry-cleaning business.

 Eventually, he took over a neighborhood convenience store called the Mini Food Mart. The store was located on North Pine Street on the east side of San Antonio. It was a small neighborhood convenience store with Hash usually working behind the counter. Hash Patel had worked long hours at the store and knew many of the people who came through his doors.

 Customers who were short a few cents sometimes knew he would let them take their groceries and pay him later. Christopher Young grew up in that very same area of San Antonio. In November of 2004, he was 21 years old. When Christopher was 8 years old, his father was shot and killed during a robbery.

 Losing his father to gun violence at such a young age changed his life. From that point on, he was raised by his mother in a tough environment, growing up on the streets without his father around to guide him. As a child, Christopher was interested in things that took focus and patience. He learned how to read music. He learned how to play the violin, the cello, and the upright bass.

 He was also a good chess player. But, as he entered his teenage years, the environment outside his home began to pull him in a different direction. He started spending more and more time on the streets, looking for a sense of belonging. He eventually joined a local street gang known as the Bloods. Once he became deeply involved in the gang lifestyle, the music and the chess fell away.

 He dropped his childhood interests and started living the gang lifestyle. He began drinking heavily. He began using narcotics. By the time he was 21, he had a young daughter of his own. But, most of his life was now centered around the streets. The events that led to his death sentence took place on the morning of Sunday, November 21st, 2004.

Christopher was awake early and he was heavily intoxicated. According to later court records and police reports, he had been drinking heavily and using coke His morning began with a violent crime spree that started just a short distance away from Harsh Patel’s store. Christopher walked into a nearby apartment complex.

 He entered a unit where a woman was inside with her three children. While inside the home, Christopher assaulted the woman. Following the assault, he demanded the keys to her vehicle. He forced the woman to walk outside of the apartment and out into the parking lot where her car was parked. While they were moving through the parking lot, the woman saw an opportunity to escape.

 She managed to get away from him, running to find help and contact the police. Christopher did not chase her. He kept her car keys, got into her vehicle, started the engine, and drove out of the apartment complex. He drove approximately one block down the street and pulled the stolen vehicle into the parking lot of the Mini Food Mart. It was around 9:30 in the morning.

Christopher got out of the car and walked through the front doors of the convenience store. Hash Patel was working his usual shift behind the counter. The store was equipped with a video security system. A camera was mounted above, pointed directly at the front counter, recording the events onto a VHS tape.

 Footage from that morning showed Christopher walking up to the counter. The two men recognized each other, as Christopher had been in the store before, and Hash was familiar with the younger residents of the neighborhood. But, this was not a normal transaction. Christopher was visibly, heavily intoxicated. An argument quickly broke out between the two men.

 Statements later revealed that the confrontation was connected to a dispute involving the mother of Christopher’s child. The argument quickly turned violent. Christopher was standing in the customer area, while Hash was standing near the cash register. Christopher would later claim that he thought Hash was reaching under the counter to grab a weapon.

 However, the police investigation found absolutely no evidence that Hash Patel had a weapon anywhere behind the counter. Christopher reached into his clothing and pulled out a .38 caliber handgun. He pointed the weapon across the counter and pulled the trigger. The first bullet struck Hash Patel. Hash immediately attempted to flee from the gunfire, turning to get away.

 Christopher fired the weapon a second time. Hash Patel collapsed to the floor behind the counter. Christopher reached over, took a small amount of cash from the register area, turned around, and walked out the front doors. He got back into the stolen car in the parking lot and drove away. Hash Patel died from the gunshot wounds.

The police response was immediate. Calls flooded the 911 dispatch center regarding the gunfire at the Mini Food Mart. Officers from the San Antonio Police Department arrived at the scene along with emergency medical personnel. They confirmed that Hash was deceased. The officers secured the perimeter with crime scene tape and began processing the store.

Detectives made their way into the back office and located the security system. They ejected the VHS tape and watched the footage. It clearly showed Christopher Young walking in, the argument taking place, Christopher pulling the handgun, the first shot, Hash trying to escape, and the second shot.

 Because he was a known figure in the area, investigators were able to identify him from the tape almost immediately. The manhunt did not last long. About 90 minutes after the shooting at the Mini Food Mart, patrol officers spotted the stolen car. It was parked on a street in front of a house that local law enforcement knew was frequently used for drug activity.

Officers approached the vehicle cautiously. Christopher Young was sitting inside. They ordered him to get out of the vehicle, and he was arrested without incident. A search revealed the .38 caliber handgun still on his person. He was placed in the back of a police cruiser and transported to the police station for booking.

Investigators began assembling the case, and they didn’t have to rely on circumstantial evidence. They had the murder weapon, which was physically recovered from Christopher at the time of his arrest. They had the stolen vehicle, which placed him at the scene of the earlier crimes. They had the surviving victim from the apartment complex, who could positively identify him, and they had the security video from the convenience store, which captured the murder in clear detail.

The Bexar County District Attorney’s Office reviewed the evidence and took the case to a grand jury. The grand jury indicted Christopher on capital murder charges. In the state of Texas, a standard murder charge can be elevated to a capital murder charge in certain situations, such as during the commission of another felony.

In this case, prosecutors based the capital charge on the argument that Christopher killed Hash Patel during the commission of a robbery. A capital murder conviction in Texas gives the jury only two options for punishment. Life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty. Prosecutors chose to seek death.

When the case went to trial in 2006 at the Bexar County Courthouse in San Antonio, Christopher was 23 years old. Capital trials in Texas are divided into two separate phases. The first phase is to decide guilt or innocence. Prosecutors presented their case. They called the patrol officers who responded to the initial 911 calls.

 They brought in the detectives who recovered the VHS tape. They questioned the officers who located the stolen car and made the arrest outside the drug house. Ballistics experts testified that the bullets recovered from the convenience store perfectly matched the .38 caliber handgun found in Christopher’s pocket. The woman from the apartment complex also took the witness stand.

She testified about Salt and the theft of her vehicle that occurred just minutes before Hash Patel was killed. The most powerful piece of evidence, however, was the security video. With the tape playing in the courtroom, jurors watched the argument, the first shot, Hash Patel attempting to flee, and the second shot.

Young’s defense attorneys faced a nearly impossible task regarding the facts of the crime. With the physical evidence, the eyewitness testimony, and the video showing their client committing the crime, they couldn’t argue that someone else was the shooter. Instead of fighting the facts, the defense tried to explain them.

 They focused heavily on his state of mind. They presented evidence of his severe intoxication from the massive amount of beer and the Coke. They argued that these substances had so severely impaired his judgment and cognitive function that he could not form the intent required under Texas law for a capital murder conviction.

After hearing the evidence and watching the video, the jury didn’t take long. They came back with a guilty verdict. The trial immediately shifted to the penalty phase, where the jury had to decide if Christopher would live or die. Prosecutors argued that Christopher was a continuing threat to society. Focusing on his active affiliation with the Bloods street gang, they emphasized the brutality of his actions on the morning of November 21st.

They pointed out that he had committed assault, a carjacking, and a murder all within a very short window of time. They argued his actions demonstrated a complete disregard for human life and that the death penalty was the only appropriate response. To counter this, the defense attorneys presented mitigation evidence.

Mitigation is information presented to a jury to try and convince them to spare a defendant’s life. They focused on Christopher’s childhood, bringing up the devastating murder of his father when Christopher was only 8 years old. They explained how that event changed his life. They detailed how his environment pulled him into the gang lifestyle because he lacked a father figure, asking the jury to consider his young age and extreme intoxication on the day of the crimes.

Under Texas law, the jury had to answer specific questions regarding his future dangerousness and whether there was enough mitigating evidence to justify a life sentence instead of death. They reached their decision and sentenced him to death. The judge read the sentence into the court record. Christopher was transferred out of the Bexar County Jail and handed over to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

He was transported to the Polunsky Unit, a maximum-security prison located near the pine forests of Livingston, which houses all male death row inmates in the state. 14 years is a very long time to spend in a prison cell. And Christopher Young was no longer the 21-year-old man who had walked into the Mini Food Mart in 2004.

At first, there was no dramatic change. When he arrived at the Polunsky Unit, he brought the streets with him. He was still involved with the gang culture that had defined his teenage years. He had disciplinary problems and remained connected to other gang members within the prison system, acting exactly like a young man who had just been handed a death sentence.

But over time, life on death row gave him a lot of time to think about his past. Separated from the daily chaos of the San Antonio streets and without access to alcohol or drugs, he began to think about what he had done with his life. Young eventually went through the prison’s formal process for renouncing his gang affiliation and cut ties with the Bloods.

With the drugs and gang life behind him, Young began looking for something else to do with his time. He read constantly. Then he started painting using authorized art supplies to create landscapes and portraits on canvas boards and the concrete walls of his small cell. Eventually, he began writing to teenagers in San Antonio who were at risk of getting pulled into the same life that had destroyed his own.

He didn’t make excuses in his letters. He used his own life as a warning, telling them exactly where his choices had taken him. He described the realities of a death row cell and told them that if they didn’t change their behavior, they would end up with an execution date just like him. Inside the prison, guards and other inmates began seeing a different side of him as well.

According to his attorneys and supporters, Young intervened when an inmate tried to violently assault a correctional officer, stepping in to protect the guard. He also stepped in when another prisoner was attempting to kill himself inside his cell, stopping the suicide attempt. He became actively involved in efforts to calm racial tensions on the cell block.

 His disciplinary record eventually improved significantly. He went from being a problem inmate to someone others could rely on. He also fought to maintain a relationship with his daughter, who was just an infant when he went to prison. Over the 14 years, he communicated with her through letters and during non-contact visits through the thick safety glass, constantly telling her to stay in school and to avoid his path.

None of this changed what happened to Hash Patel. Young knew that. He never claimed that 14 years of better behavior could erase a murder. But it raised a different question. Could a person who had committed a terrible crime become a completely different person afterward? For 14 years, Christopher Young’s case followed the same path as many other Texas death row cases.

 Then Mitesh Patel changed his mind. The son of the man Young killed no longer wanted him to die. For years, Mitesh Patel wanted Christopher Young to be executed. The murder had shattered the Patel family. They had to bury Hash, figure out how to run the convenience store without him, and live with the sudden, violent absence of the man who held their family together.

 Mitesh lived with that anger, that grief, and that desire for revenge for a long time, believing the death penalty was the right outcome. But by 2018, Mitesh was a father himself. He now understood what it meant to raise children, and what it would mean for them to grow up without a father. As the state of Texas officially set Christopher’s execution date for July 17th, 2018, Mitesh began learning more about what had happened to the man on death row.

He learned about the letters Young was writing to keep young people out of trouble. He learned about his behavior inside the prison, protecting guards and stopping violence. And he learned about Christopher’s relationship with his teenage daughter. That last part mattered deeply to Mitesh.

 He knew exactly what it meant for a child to lose a father to gun violence, having lived through that specific nightmare himself. Now, he was looking at another child who was about to lose hers. Christopher Young had taken Mitesh’s father away. But if Texas executed Young, Mitesh believed another family would lose a father, and another child would experience that exact same trauma.

 That realization did not erase the murder, nor did it bring Harsh Patel back. But Mitesh began asking himself what another death would actually accomplish. Eventually, he reached an answer. Mitesh reached out to Christopher’s defense attorneys, offering to help fight for clemency. He began speaking to the media in San Antonio and Houston, stating publicly that he forgave his father’s killer and wanted his sentence commuted to life in prison.

A few days before the scheduled execution, Mitesh traveled to the Polunsky Unit and arranged for a special visitation. Walking into the visitation room, he sat down as Christopher was brought into the room on the other side of the safety glass. They picked up the telephones. It was the first time they had ever spoken.

 Mitesh looked at Christopher and told him that he forgave him. Christopher broke down crying, apologizing to Mitesh for taking his father away. They talked about Harsh. They talked about Mitesh’s children, and they talked about Christopher’s daughter. Mitesh walked out of the prison convinced that Christopher was genuinely remorseful and that the man he had met was very different from the man who killed his father.

With the execution date around the corner, the defense attorneys put together a large clemency petition to submit to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Clemency is a request to reduce or change a death sentence. In Texas, the governor cannot commute a death sentence without a favorable recommendation from this board.

The petition highlighted Young’s clean prison record, his art, and his letters to youth. It also featured a recorded video message from Mitesh Patel directly asking the board to spare Christopher’s life. But the lawyers also built their petition around a specific recent case. Just months earlier, the same parole board had granted clemency to a white inmate named Thomas Whitaker.

Whitaker had orchestrated a plot, hiring a hitman to murder his mother and his brother to collect an inheritance. His father was also shot, but survived. Whitaker’s father forgave him and aggressively campaigned for his life to be spared. The board recommended clemency, and the governor agreed. Christopher’s attorneys argued that the two cases were very similar, a rehabilitated inmate with the forgiveness and support of the victim’s family.

 They argued that denying Christopher while granting Whitaker would be evidence of racial bias. The state of Texas pushed back hard against this comparison. Prosecutors argued that the cases were not identical at all. They pointed out that Thomas Whitaker was the mastermind of the plot, but he did not physically pull the trigger. Christopher Young, on the other hand, was the sole shooter who aimed the gun at Hash Patel.

 Furthermore, prosecutors highlighted Christopher’s extensive criminal behavior on the morning of the murder, specifically the sexual assault and the carjacking at the apartment complex. They argued his overall criminal history and early disciplinary issues in prison made him a different legal case entirely. The board did not hold a public hearing.

Each member reviewed the case separately before voting. On Friday, July 13th, 4 days before the execution, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected the request unanimously. With the board’s denial, the execution was locked in. The defense attorneys then took the fight to the federal courts, launching a frantic legal sprint over the final weekend.

They filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal district court in Houston, arguing that the parole board’s decision was influenced by racial discrimination, pointing back to the Whitaker case. They asked the federal judge for an emergency stay of execution so they could investigate the board’s voting process. On Monday, July 16th, the federal judge held a hearing.

The judge heard the arguments, but ruled that the defense had not provided enough legal reasons to halt the execution under federal law. The stay was denied. On the morning of Tuesday, July 17th, the day of the execution, the attorneys appealed to the fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals.

 The fifth circuit reviewed the arguments and issued its ruling that same day. The court did not decide whether racial discrimination had occurred. Instead, the judges ruled that Young’s lawyers had not presented enough evidence to give the court a reason to stop the execution and allow them to investigate further. Later that afternoon, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to intervene.

There was only one option left. While the governor of Texas could not grant full clemency without the board’s approval, Governor Greg Abbott did have the legal power to issue a one-time 30-day reprieve. Young’s attorneys sent an emergency plea to the governor’s office, asking him to use that power to pause the execution for 30 days so the courts could take more time to review the victim family’s request.

The governor did not intervene. The 30-day reprieve was not granted. On the evening of July 17th, outside the Huntsville Unit, protesters gathered holding signs mentioning Mitesh Patel’s request for mercy. Mitesh and his family did not attend, choosing to stay in San Antonio, refusing to be witnesses to another death.

Inside the prison, Christopher Young was moved into the execution chamber. He was strapped to the gurney and intravenous lines were inserted into his arms. The warden stood near him and asked if he had a final statement. Christopher looked through the glass at the witness room. He said he wanted to make sure the Patel family knew that he loved them.

He then addressed the young kids he had been mentoring from his cell, telling them to make sure they knew he was being executed and urging them to keep fighting to stay out of trouble. At 6:13 p.m., the pentobarbital began flowing. Young cursed twice. He said he could taste the drug in his throat and that it was burning.

 Within minutes, he stopped breathing. At 6:38 p.m., he was pronounced dead. 14 years earlier, he had walked into Hash Patel’s store and taken his life. 14 years later, Hash’s son had stood on the other side of a prison visitation window and told the man who killed his father that he forgave him. Mitesh Patel could not bring his father back.

 He could not change what happened that morning in San Antonio and he could not stop the state of Texas from carrying out the death sentence. But he had asked the state to recognize something he believed 14 years on death row had made clear. The man who committed the murder in 2004 was not the same man he had come to know in 2018.

Texas disagreed. The execution went forward and Christopher Young died with the victim’s family asking the state to let him live.