A Texas man was put to death Wednesday in the first US execution since the botched lethal injection of Christa Pike in Tennessee last week.
Jamaal Howard, 46, was pronounced dead at 8.03pm after receiving a fatal dose of pentobarbital, a sedative, at the state prison in Huntsville.
Howard’s lawyers sought to halt the execution, arguing to the Texas court of criminal appeals there were similar risks of executing Howard using the same lethal injection drug that was used on Pike. Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital and had complained her arms felt like they were going to explode as she was given the drug.
“Texas should not be eager to follow in Tennessee’s footsteps,” Howard’s attorneys argued.
The court denied the request for a stay and later denied a second attempt to stop the execution over the drug. The court denied both without elaboration. The US supreme court also denied a late appeal Wednesday evening without comment.
Texas has executed six people so far this year, with two more lethal injections scheduled after Howard. He is the 30th person executed nationwide in 2026.
Howard was found guilty of capital murder in 2001 for robbing a convenience store in Silsbee, a town north of Beaumont, and fatally shooting 42-year-old clerk Vickie Swartout.
Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Howard apologized profusely to members of his victim’s family, who watched through a viewing window just feet from the death chamber.
“I wish that you accept my apology and I wish for your forgiveness,” he said, shortly before the injection got underway. “I’m sorry for what happened. I wish you can learn to forgive me one of these days.”
His legal team argued that, at the time of the crime, Howard was intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty, as the supreme court ruled in 2002.
Jamaal Howard in this Texas department of criminal justice handout. Photograph: Texas department of criminal justice/AP
Pike regained consciousness on Tuesday. Her lawyers say she has pneumonia and is unable to move her arms.
Pike’s was the second botched execution in Tennessee this year, and governor Bill Lee has barred any further lethal injections for the rest of the year. He has also ordered a probe into why Pike’s execution failed. Pike’s lawyers had previously argued her blood disorder would make a lethal injection painful. Speculation has also swirled over the quality of the pentobarbital.
“There is a similar risk,” Howard’s attorneys wrote in the Wednesday motion filed with Texas’s court of criminal appeals, “that Texas’s execution drugs are likewise degraded, as they are far past the original beyond-use dates that the pharmacopeia allows for drugs of this kind.”
Last week, the fifth circuit court of appeals declined a request to stop Howard’s execution.
Texas officials did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday morning.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
