Terry Doug Clark (May 17, 1956 – November 6, 2001) was convicted of the murder of nine-year-old Dena Lynn Gore. He was executed by the State of New Mexico by means of lethal injection. He was the only person to be executed in New Mexico between the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 and its subsequent abolition within New Mexico in 2009.
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Terry Clark was convicted of kidnapping and raping a six-year-old girl from Roswell in 1986. Pending appeals in that case, he was released on bond. While out on bond, Clark drove to Artesia on July 17, 1986 and kidnapped nine-year-old Dena Lynn Gore. He then raped her and finally killed her by shooting her in the back of her head three times. Dena's bound and decomposing body was found, partially buried, on a nearby ranch on July 22, 1986. A few days later, Clark was taken into custody and, while in jail, he confessed to a minister.
At his trial later that same year, Clark pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murder and was sentenced to death, but the New Mexico Supreme Court overturned the sentence in 1994, saying his constitutional rights had been violated and that he should be re-sentenced. During his re-sentencing in 1996, a second jury again decided that Clark should die for his crimes.
Clark waived his appeals in 1999 and was executed on November 6, 2001. This made him the only New Mexico inmate to be executed in 41 years and the first and only one to be executed by means of lethal injection. Nearly eight years later, on March 18, 2009, Governor Bill Richardson, after many struggles with the death penalty issues (he had been a supporter of capital punishment for years), finally signed a death penalty abolition bill into law. [1]