Oct. 7 (UPI) — Texas executed a death row inmate on Wednesday night, the first execution to be carried out in the United States since last week’s failed execution of Christa Pike by Tennessee.
Jamaal Howard, 46, was convicted of capital murder in 2001. He was 20 when, on May 12, 2000, he fatally shot Vickie Swartout, 42, in a convenience store and stole $114 from the cash register and a carton of cigarettes, according to court documents.
Howard was scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. CDT at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, located about 70 miles north of Houston.
He was pronounced dead at 8:03 p.m., the Texas Department of Criminal Justice told UPI in an emailed statement.
Howard used his last statement to apologize to the Swartout family and wish them closure and peace.
“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.”
He was killed after the Supreme Court rejected three applications to stop the execution, including challenges based on his intellectual disability and the constitutionality of executing him under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals also denied Howard’s emergency request for a stay on Wednesday over concerns about the state’s lethal injection drug.
His lawyers also asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to delay the execution for 30 days to wait for more information about the drug to be used in the lethal injection. The request was not granted.
Texas uses pentobarbital, the same drug that failed to kill Pike after two doses in Tennessee.
Texas buys pentobarbital from compounding pharmacies because drug manufacturers refuse to sell it for executions. Because the supply is limited, the state extends the beyond-use date after testing its supply. Critics have argued that the method is unsafe.
Howard’s lawyers said they asked the Texas Department of Criminal Justice about the drug it planned to use on Howard and for details of where it had been stored. But the department refused to answer.
“We do not ask you to decide anything about Mr. Howard’s case other than this: that he should not be executed with a drug whose history the state has refused to let his lawyers see, within days of the same drug failing in another state,” Howard’s lawyers wrote in a letter to Abbott.
Howard was the seventh man executed in Texas and the 30th person executed nationwide this year. Texas has scheduled to more to be executed in 2026.