Texas executed death row inmate Jamaal Howard by lethal injection on Wednesday evening, the first execution carried out in the United States since Tennessee's botched attempt to execute Christa Pike using the same drug a week earlier.
Howard, 46, received a fatal dose of pentobarbital at the state prison in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 8:03 p.m. local time, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He had been convicted of murdering Vickie Swartout, 42, a convenience store clerk, during a 2000 robbery in which he was reported to have taken a carton of cigarettes and $114 from the register. Howard was 20 years old at the time of the killing.
His lawyers had asked courts to halt the execution, arguing that because Texas planned to use the same drug that failed to kill Pike in Tennessee the week before, Howard faced similar risks, and alleging that the state's pentobarbital supply had degraded.
Texas should not be eager to follow in Tennessee's footsteps; a stay would keep that from happening.
Howard's attorneys, in a court filing reported by CBS News
Texas courts rejected the appeal twice, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene late Wednesday. Howard's attorneys separately asked Governor Greg Abbott for a 30-day reprieve to investigate the drug supply; Abbott did not grant it. In a final statement, Howard apologized to Swartout's family, who watched the execution from a witness room. "I wish that you accept my apology, and I wish for your forgiveness," he said. "I'm sorry for what happened. I wish you can learn to forgive me one of these days."
Pike survived her own execution attempt on 30 September after medical staff struggled to establish an IV line and administered two lethal doses of pentobarbital without killing her; she remains hospitalized and on a ventilator. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has since suspended all executions in the state for the remainder of the year and ordered a third-party review of what happened. The Death Penalty Information Center says Pike is the first person known to have survived after actually being injected with a lethal dose of execution drugs, rather than after a failed attempt to find a vein.
