Update August 17, 2022 7:15pm: After rejecting his most recent appeals, the state executed Kosoul Chanthakoummane on schedule. According to the Texas Tribune’s Jolie McCullough, in his final moments he thanked his supporters and spiritual advisors. “To Ms. Walker’s family I pray my death will bring you peace,” he said, according to McCullough’s tweet.
Update August 17, 2022 3:00pm: Just hours before the scheduled execution, the Texas Observer spoke with one of the jurors who convicted Chanthakoummane about new concerns about the DNA evidence used in the trial.
Kosoul Chanthakoummane, the son of Laotian immigrants, is set to be executed on Aug. 17 in Texas for the murder of Dallas-area realtor Sarah Walker. On the afternoon of July 8, 2006, Walker’s body was discovered by a couple visiting a model home in the Craig Ranch subdivision in McKinney. She had been stabbed 33 times, but the Collin County Medical Examiner noted that ten knife wounds had punctured vital organs or blood vessels—any one would have been fatal. She had put up a fight. She had a broken nose and fractured teeth. And—a point that would later prove critical at the trial—she had a bite mark on the back of her neck.
