Attorneys argued pentobarbital carried same risks as Tennessee’s
Texas executed a 46-year-old man by lethal injection on Wednesday evening, marking the first execution carried out in the United States since Tennessee’s halted attempt to put Christa Pike to death last week. Jamaal Howard received a fatal dose of pentobarbital at the state prison in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 20:03 local time, CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, reported.
Howard’s attorneys asked a judge to pause the execution, citing the botched injections that left Pike alive. They argued that because Texas planned to inject Howard with the same drug — pentobarbital — that was used on Pike, Howard faced the same risks. The attorneys also alleged that Texas’s supply of the drug had become degraded, as Pike’s lawyers have similarly argued.
A court twice denied the attorneys’ appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court turned down the final request late Wednesday. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, did not grant a separate 30-day delay the attorneys had requested so they could seek additional information about the drug.
Howard was 20 years old when he shot and killed Vickie Swartout, 42, during a 2000 robbery at a Texas convenience store. He stole a carton of cigarettes and $114 from the register during the robbery.
Asked for a final statement, Howard apologized to Swartout’s family, who watched from a witness room. “I wish that you accept my apology, and I wish for your forgiveness,” Howard said, according to US media reports. “I’m sorry for what happened. I wish you can learn to forgive me one of these days.”
The attorneys urged courts to allow more time for the drug supply to be examined. “Texas should not be eager to follow in Tennessee’s footsteps; a stay would keep that from happening,” the defense argued, CBS reported.
Texas’s execution was the first in the United States since Tennessee halted Pike’s execution last week after two failed pentobarbital injections.
Howard had been on Texas’s death row since his 2000 conviction.