Jerry Duane Martin Execution + Last Meal and Words | Texas Death Row (US)

In September 2007, a crisp Texas morning turned deadly outside the Wynne Unit prison in Huntsville. What began as a routine work detail for two inmates quickly spiraled into a desperate escape attempt and a tragedy that shook the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to its core. Jerry Dwayne Martin, already serving a 50-year sentence for attempted capital murder, saw an opportunity to run.

Alongside fellow inmate John Ray Faulk Jr., he overpowered a guard, stole a truck, and made a break across the open field. Standing in his way was 59-year-old correctional officer Susan Canfield, mounted proudly on her horse and determined to stop them. In the chaos, Martin drove the stolen truck directly into her path. Her horse collapsed, and Officer Canfield was thrown violently to the ground, losing her life in an instant.

That moment sealed Martin’s fate. Six years later, in 2013, he would take his final breath inside Texas’s notorious Walls Unit execution chamber. To understand how a troubled childhood turned into decades of crime, how an officer’s bravery ended in tragedy, and what Martin’s last day looked like inside Huntsville’s infamous Walls Unit, we have to go back to the very beginning.

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A Troubled Beginning

Jerry Dwayne Martin was born on March 28th, 1970, in Texas, into a world that from the very beginning seemed stacked against him. His childhood was marked by deep instability. He grew up moving from place to place, and unlike most boys his age who longed for the guidance of a steady father figure, Jerry barely knew his own. His father’s absence left a hollow void, and that emptiness was soon filled with destructive influences.

By the age of 11, when most children are still clinging to innocence, Jerry had already turned to alcohol and drugs—a dangerous escape from the pain he carried inside. That same year, in a haunting cry for help, he attempted suicide, a tragic act that revealed how dark and overwhelming his young world had become.

School offered no refuge. Struggling academically and emotionally, Jerry dropped out by the 10th grade, shutting the door on the stability an education might have provided. Instead, he drifted into construction work, scraping together a living with his hands, but never finding the discipline or direction to pull himself away from the chaos of his inner demons. Court psychologists would later describe him as deeply troubled, haunted by abandonment, addiction, and despair.

And while it is important to recognize the pain and brokenness that shaped Jerry Martin’s early years, it is equally important to understand that hardship does not excuse what he would later do. His path, paved with heartache, poor choices, and escalating defiance, was already set on a collision course with violence. What began as a childhood marred by neglect and bad influences would in time lead him not only behind prison walls, but ultimately to the gates of death row.

Escalating Defiance and the 1994 Standoff

In 1991, Jerry Dwayne Martin crossed the line that would begin his long and violent history with the Texas prison system. He was convicted of theft and handed a 10-year sentence, a serious punishment for someone just 21 years old. But the Texas prisons of the early 1990s were under strict federal population caps. Judge William Wayne Justice had ordered the state to reduce overcrowding, and because of that, thousands of inmates were quietly released long before serving their full time. Jerry Martin was one of them.

Instead of spending the better part of a decade behind bars, he was freed on what was called “shock probation”—the idea being that a short burst of prison life would scare an offender straight. For Martin, though, there was no shock, no lesson learned. Freedom came quickly, and it gave him more time to feed his addictions, stoke his anger, and slip deeper into the kind of recklessness that would soon turn violent.

The turning point came on August 15th, 1994. Police were called to Martin’s mother’s home in rural Collin County after reports of gunfire during a heated domestic disturbance. By the time officers arrived, Martin had already fled in his truck. What followed was chaos: a high-speed chase that tore across quiet country roads and through the heart of a community unprepared for the violence erupting in its backyards.

Martin drove recklessly, hitting speeds of 60 and 70 mph down narrow two-lane roads. He swerved off pavement and into yards, tearing up the grass just feet from family homes. Children, neighbors, and bystanders watched in fear as the truck roared past. Inside, Martin could be seen waving a pistol, sometimes out the window, sometimes pressed against his own temple, alternating between defiance and despair.

Deputies gave chase, their patrol cars pushing to keep up, their radios crackling with updates. Shots rang out. Martin fired at the pursuing officers, and though no one was hit, the message was chilling: he was willing to kill to avoid capture. The chase stretched on, escalating with every mile.

Eventually, Martin pulled off the road into a wide maize field. There, he spun the truck around and positioned it to face the road—a calculated move, almost as if preparing for a final showdown. He stepped out of the cab, pistol still in hand, and pressed it hard against his head. Officers took cover. A standoff had begun.

For hours, the field became the center of a tense, dangerous stalemate. Law enforcement poured into the area: patrol deputies, sharpshooters, and trained negotiators. Their orders were clear: per policy, no officer was to return fire, even if Martin pulled the trigger. The priority was to contain him, not to escalate. One sheriff’s negotiator, protected only by a bulletproof shield, edged closer and began talking to Martin. The goal was simple: get him to lower the gun, surrender peacefully, and spare lives.

But Martin’s response sent chills down the line of officers waiting in the field. He threatened to kill the negotiator outright. At one point, he leveled the pistol directly in the negotiator’s direction and squeezed the trigger, firing a shot close enough to make it clear he was deadly serious. Other rounds followed, one bullet whizzing dangerously close to another officer on the perimeter.

Imagine the tension: an armed man pacing in the middle of a field, his gun swinging between his own temple and the officers who surrounded him, knowing full well that by policy they could not return fire. Hours passed in this deadly dance. Negotiators pleaded. Officers braced. The community around them held its breath.

Finally, after the standoff stretched deep into the night, Martin relented. He was arrested and taken into custody. By sheer luck, or perhaps by divine intervention, no one was killed that day. But what could have ended with relief quickly turned into an even darker chapter. Martin was released on bond while awaiting trial. But instead of facing justice, he vanished.

For nearly three years, he lived as a fugitive, leaving Texas behind and slipping into obscurity. It wasn’t until 1997 in the state of Kansas that authorities caught up to him. Extradited back to Texas, he was finally made to face the charges: two counts of attempted capital murder for the shots fired at deputies, aggravated assault, and failure to appear in court.

The court system was unforgiving this time. Martin was slammed with a crushing set of sentences: 50 years for one attempted capital murder, 40 years for the other, 10 years for aggravated assault, and another 10 years for failing to appear. Stacked together, it was enough to ensure that Jerry Martin would spend most of his life behind bars. But prison didn’t change him. If anything, it hardened him. By the mid-1990s, Jerry Dwayne Martin was no longer a troubled young man on the edge of society. He was now a convicted violent offender, serving what was effectively a life sentence and already thinking of ways to escape the walls that confined him.

The Fatal Escape of 2007

And when the opportunity finally presented itself, Martin would seize it with consequences no one could have predicted.

September 24th, 2007. It was a Monday morning in Huntsville, Texas. The air was warm, the sun steady overhead, and at the Wynne Unit prison, a squad of 20 inmates was hard at work in the onion fields just outside the main security fence. Among them were two men who had already spent years behind bars: 37-year-old Jerry Dwayne Martin and 40-year-old John Ray Faulk Jr.

At first glance, nothing about that day looked unusual. The prisoners moved in long lines, watched closely by armed guards on horseback, part of a routine work detail the prison had carried out for decades. But what no one knew was that Martin and Faulk had been watching, waiting, looking for any weakness in the system. And on this day, they decided to act.

Martin walked up to one of the mounted officers using a simple distraction. He said his watch was broken and asked if the officer could hold it. While the guard’s attention flickered for just a second, Faulk moved in from the other side. In an instant, the two men lunged. Martin grabbed for the revolver at the officer’s side, wrestling for control of the weapon. The horse reared. Shouts erupted across the field. Faulk rushed in to help, pushing the officer to the ground. Within seconds, the revolver was torn free. Martin tossed it to Faulk, and the balance of power shifted. Now the inmates had the gun.

Chaos exploded across the onion patch. The two convicts bolted for the edge of the property, clawing through a barbed-wire fence that separated the prison fields from the Huntsville City Service Center. Guards shouted commands, warning shots cracked through the air, and suddenly the sleepy outskirts of town became the scene of a prison break.

The two men split up, running in opposite directions. Faulk, with a revolver in his hand, drew the immediate focus of the guards. Shots were fired in his direction, but none hit their mark. And in that moment of distraction, Martin found something far more dangerous than a handgun: a one-ton flatbed pickup truck parked at the service center with the keys still inside. He climbed into the cab, turned the ignition, and suddenly the escape attempt took on deadly momentum.

Just ahead of him, mounted on her horse, was 59-year-old correctional officer Susan Canfield. She was a respected veteran of the department, a woman described by her peers as fearless, disciplined, and deeply committed to keeping her community safe. That morning, she had been assigned to patrol the service center, an extra layer of security. Now, she was the last line of defense.

Officer Canfield didn’t flinch. When Faulk tried to advance with the revolver, she drew her weapon and fired until her rounds were gone. She reached for her rifle, prepared to stop him, but Faulk managed to wrestle it away. For a moment, it looked like she might have been outmatched, until fate intervened in the form of Martin behind the wheel of the stolen truck.

With the engine roaring, Martin barreled straight toward her and her horse. Witnesses recalled the horrifying impact. The truck slammed into the animal with brutal force. The horse crumpled instantly, collapsing beneath the steel frame, while Officer Canfield was thrown violently onto the hood. Her back and shoulders smashed against the windshield. Her head struck the roof, and then, with heartbreaking finality, her body was flung into the air before crashing down onto the ground.

The truck did not stop. In that instant, the escape attempt had claimed a life. Susan Canfield—mother, wife, dedicated correctional officer—lay fatally injured. She would never rise again. Her horse, gravely wounded and already carrying a bullet injury from earlier in the chaos, was later euthanized.

Martin pulled the truck around and picked up Faulk, who climbed into the passenger seat with the stolen rifle. The two men sped away, desperate, reckless, and now wanted not just as escapees, but as killers.

Inside the service center, employees scrambled. One worker, Jay Miller, jumped into his own vehicle and began tailing the fleeing inmates while on the phone with 911. The chase snaked through Huntsville’s roads and onto Interstate 45. At one point, the truck’s passenger, Faulk, leaned out with the rifle and fired at Miller, narrowly missing him. But Miller refused to back down. He stayed on their trail, updating police step by step.

The flatbed truck roared down the highway, but freedom was already slipping away. The rifleman fired blindly at pursuing officers. Shots cracked through the windshield of squad cars, into open fields, across stretches of Texas road. But police and sheriff’s deputies closed in, cornering the stolen vehicle as it pulled into a grassy field. With the engine stalling, the two men bailed.

Faulk hijacked a pickup in a bank drive-thru, shoving the driver aside. Martin, now carrying the stolen rifle, leapt into the bed of the truck like a man preparing for a final stand. Officers fired at the tires, blowing one out, forcing the truck into the fields again. There, Martin stood tall in the bed, aimed the rifle at officers, and pulled the trigger. The shot missed, but in that instant, the last remnants of his escape unraveled. Both men sprinted into the woods, vanishing into the thick underbrush.

A massive manhunt descended on the area. Roads were closed, helicopters circled, officers swept the forest in tight formation. Faulk was found within an hour, exhausted and cornered, surrendering without resistance. Martin, however, remained on the run. He stripped off his clothes, ditching his boots and shirt until he was down to his underwear, hoping to move undetected through the brush. But by evening, searchers found him cowering high in a tree. He was dragged down, handcuffed, and taken back into custody.

The escape attempt was over, but its cost was unbearable. Officer Susan Canfield had lost her life in the line of duty. Her colleagues, her family, and the entire community of Huntsville were left in mourning. What began as a desperate bid for freedom by two convicts had become a tragedy that would stain Jerry Martin’s name forever.

In a letter to his brother weeks later, Martin described the escape in chilling detail, almost boasting about his so-called courage. “You will never know the resolve, the desperate courage it took for me to wrestle an armed guard off his horse and take his gun while three other guards were shooting at me,” he wrote. But those words rang hollow against the reality of what he had done. A mother was dead, her horse gone, and an entire community shattered.

The Trial and the Final Hours

In December 2009, Jerry Dwayne Martin stood before a jury in Walker County, Texas, facing the most serious charge imaginable: capital murder, specifically for the death of a peace officer during an attempted prison escape.

The courtroom was heavy with tension as prosecutors meticulously laid out the details of how Martin, alongside fellow inmate John Faulk, orchestrated the desperate bid for freedom that tragically ended with the death of correctional officer Susan Canfield. Witness after witness painted a grim picture of the chaos that day, describing Martin’s role in hijacking a vehicle and the fatal events that followed.

The jury deliberated, weighed the facts, and returned a verdict that sealed Martin’s fate: guilty of capital murder. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection, a punishment reflecting the gravity of taking the life of a correctional officer in the line of duty. While Martin’s conviction came swiftly, his co-defendant Faulk’s legal journey was far more drawn out, entangled in years of hearings, appeals, and retrials, until he too was ultimately sentenced to death in 2017, almost a decade later.

Unlike Faulk, Martin displayed no desire to fight the system. In a striking move in 2013, he voluntarily waived his right to continue pursuing appeals, openly declaring that he did not wish to delay justice any further. He accepted his fate, stating that prolonging the process only prolonged the suffering of the victim’s family. This unusual stance set him apart from many death row inmates who often spend years, even decades, battling through the appellate process. Martin’s decision gave his story a haunting finality, as though he had resigned himself to the inevitable outcome of his actions.

On December 3rd, 2013, Jerry Dwayne Martin awoke knowing this was his final day on Earth. Inside Texas’s prison system, the rituals of execution day are carried out with clockwork precision. Like every condemned prisoner before him, Martin was offered the traditional special last meal. But consistent with Texas’s policy since 2011, he was served the standard unit meal. There was no indulgence, no feast—just the plain, routine food of the prison. He ate quietly, knowing that every bite brought him closer to his last moments.

As the day wore on, Martin was prepared for the final transfer. At the appointed hour, officers escorted him from his holding cell to the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas, the site of all executions in the state. Surrounded by guards, Martin walked voluntarily, offering no resistance.

Once inside the execution building, the somber ritual unfolded. He was taken into the death chamber, a small, sterile room with pale walls and a gurney at the center. Prison officers secured him firmly with straps, ensuring he could not move. On the other side of the viewing glass, witnesses gathered: state officials, media representatives, and family members of his victim, each waiting in silence as the final moments of justice played out.

When it came time for his last words, Martin turned his gaze toward the Canfield family and spoke with a mixture of remorse and finality. His voice carried a weight that filled the chamber as he said:

“I would like to tell the Canfield family, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your loss. I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. I hope this gives you closure. I did not murder your loved one. It was an accident. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it happened. I take full responsibility.”

He then shifted his words to those closest to him—his brother and friends who had come to witness his last moments—declaring his love for them and leaving behind a sense of peace. His final thought carried both resignation and faith:

“You know, I’m at peace. God is the ultimate judge. He knows what happened.”

At precisely 6:00 p.m., the process began. The drug of execution was pentobarbital, the powerful barbiturate that Texas had adopted in 2012 after switching from a three-drug protocol. The lethal dose entered his veins smoothly, administered by the unseen executioner.

Outside, cameras captured the scene at the Walls Unit. Protesters holding signs against the death penalty while others stood in firm support of the execution, believing justice was finally being served. Guards lined the grounds in solemn formation, honoring the gravity of the moment.

As the pentobarbital coursed through his system, Martin’s breathing slowed, his eyes closed, and within minutes, his body grew still. A doctor stepped forward to check for a heartbeat, and at 6:27 p.m. on December 3rd, 2013, Jerry Dwayne Martin was pronounced dead by lethal injection. His death marked the closing chapter of a long and violent story, one that ended not with chaos, but with silence inside a small chamber in Huntsville, Texas, while the world outside debated the meaning of justice, redemption, and the finality of death.

What are your thoughts on this case? Do you believe his final words showed true remorse? Or were they an attempt to rewrite the narrative at the very end? Share your opinions in the comments below. We’d love to hear your perspective. Don’t forget to hit the like button, share this story with others who follow true crime, and subscribe to our channel for more jaw-dropping real-life crime stories you won’t want to miss.