Texas set to carry out first US execution since Christa Pike's botched lethal injection
Texas plans to execute Jamaal Howard by lethal injection on Wednesday in the first US execution since Christa Pike survived a botched attempt in Tennessee, despite pleas over the same drug and unanswered questions about its supply.
Texas is set to carry out the first execution in the United States since Tennessee’s botched lethal injection of Christa Pike, with convicted murderer Jamaal Howard scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at 6pm CT on Wednesday at the Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas. If it goes ahead, Howard will become the seventh prisoner executed in Texas this year and the 30th nationwide in 2026 (USA Today).
Howard, 46, was convicted of capital murder for the robbery and killing of Vickie Swartout, a 42-year-old clerk at a Chevron petrol station in Silsbee, a small town north-east of Houston. Court records describe how Howard, then 20, walked into the store on 12 May 2000, shot Swartout once in the chest and fled with $114 and a carton of cigarettes; the attack was caught on the store’s surveillance cameras (CNN).
The execution is planned to use pentobarbital — the same sedative given in two doses to Pike, 50, on 30 September, after which she survived and regained consciousness in hospital, where she remains awake and speaking (CNN). Pike’s attorneys believe her IV lines were improperly placed; Tennessee’s governor has halted the state’s remaining execution for the rest of the year (USA Today, CNN).
Howard’s attorneys asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stop Wednesday’s execution and urged Governor Greg Abbott to grant a 30-day reprieve so they can obtain records on when the pentobarbital was bought, how it has been stored and what testing it has undergone. The court refused the stay without explanation on Wednesday, and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also declined to intervene (CNN, USA Today).
The defence has also argued that Howard is intellectually disabled and cannot lawfully be executed, with an appeal to the US Supreme Court still pending; the state has described the claims as without merit (USA Today, CNN).
It is the first scheduled execution since Pike’s failed attempt, which we covered in three stories on 29 and 30 September (The Times).
Sources: USA Today, CNN, The Times.
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