Condemned inmate Luis Ramirez chuckles about how he's been a lifelong prankster and wonders if his death sentence is the ultimate prank by someone trying to get even with him.

Ramirez was convicted of fatally shooting a San Angelo firefighter in 1998, which prosecutors said was the climax of a murder-for-hire scheme he initiated. The victim, Nemecio Nandin, 29, had been dating Ramirez's ex-wife.

Appeals lawyers asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute his sentence to life in prison. They also were in the courts to try to block the execution.

"The case to me is an example of how the world of domestic violence can turn into a horrible murder when it's not checked," Steve Lupton, the district attorney in San Angelo who prosecuted Ramirez, said this week.

Testimony in the capital murder trial showed Ramirez remained obsessed with his ex-wife, Dawn, some two years after a 1995 divorce following eight years of marriage. Investigators who questioned his former wife said she learned from their children that Ramirez had been asking them about her relationship with Nandin the weekend before the firefighter disappeared and declared to their children he would "take care of the problem."

Authorities believed Ramirez, working with an accomplice, lured Nandin to a house near Tennyson, about 25 miles northeast of San Angelo, under the pretense of repair job. Nandin had a side job as an appliance repairman.

An informant told police Ramirez had offered him $1,000 to participate in the killing but that money instead was paid to Edward Bell, who later was arrested in Tyler. Inside Bell's wallet were Ramirez's business card, a hand-drawn map to the home of Ramirez's ex-wife, a description of her vehicle and license plate number, all in Ramirez's handwriting. Also in Bell's vehicle was a pair of jeans covered with Nandin's blood.

Bell's girlfriend took detectives to a spot where she said Bell tossed a pair of latex gloves. They found a glove and the keys to Nandin's truck.

"I didn't do this," Ramirez, who worked at a San Angelo mortgage company, said from death row, arguing he was checking out a property some 70 miles away at the time of the slaying. "I have no idea who did. I didn't even have a parking ticket on my record."

During the punishment phase of his trial, Ramirez's former wife told jurors she was verbally and physically abused and threatened after they separated. The wife from an earlier marriage testified he abused her as well. There also was testimony he had destroyed one of his wives' cars to collect insurance money, trashed a house she was trying to sell, slashed the tires of a man one of his ex-wives was dating and threatened another.

"They don't have any physical evidence that directly ties Mr. Ramirez to the crime — no fingerprints, nobody saw him right there," Ramirez's appeals lawyer, Rusty Wall, said. "They have strong circumstantial evidence."

"We asked the jury to find him guilty and the jury did," Lupton said. "We felt like this case warranted answering those special issues so that he would be executed and the jury agreed. I haven't changed my opinion on what I asked the jury to do."

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