Texas scheduled to execute man one week after Christa Pike's failed execution
Texas - Texas is set to execute a man convicted in a 2000 deadly robbery of a convenience store which killed a woman.
Jamaal Howard, 46, is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday by lethal injection in Huntsville at the Huntsville Unit. He would be the seventh inmate executed in Texas this year.
Texas man to be executed
What we know:
Howard was 20-years-old when he robbed a convenience store in Silsbee, north of Beaumont, on May 12, 2000. He shot and killed 42-year-old store clerk Vickie Swartout in the chest. Howard took $114 from the register during the robbery and a pack of cigarettes.
Jamaal Howard (Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
The Associated Press reports evidence showed during the trial included surveillance video from inside the store which showed Howard shooting Swartout.
He was convicted of capital murder in Hardin County less than a year later and sentenced to death, according to The Texas Tribune.
Howard's attorneys argue Howard is intellectually disabled, so his execution should be halted, the AP stated. However, the state argued evidence has not been presented to show he meets the requirements for a claim of intellectual disability.
First execution in U.S. since failed Tennessee execution
The backstory:
Howard’s execution is scheduled as the first in the United States since a failed execution attempt in Tennessee on Sept. 30 involving Christa Pike. Pike survived after being injected with two lethal drug doses of pentobarbital. She was hospitalized and as of Tuesday, reports state she was awake and speaking.
AP reports Howard would be receiving the same drug used on Pike, pentobarbital. His attorneys are asking a judge to stay his execution, set for Wednesday, the drug poses the same risks and they believe the state’s supply has become degraded.
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"There is a similar risk," Howard’s attorneys wrote, "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."
According to AP News, the motion filed in the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas early Wednesday said Howard’s attorneys filed requests for information about the lethal dose of pentobarbital the Texas Department of Criminal Justice planned to use.
The Source: Information in this article was provided by AP News, the Texas Tribune, and Texas Department of Criminal Justice.