Texas executed a death row inmate by lethal injection on Wednesday evening, October 7, which became the first execution in the United States after Christa Pike’s failed execution in Tennessee. Lawyers for 46-year-old Jamaal Howard had asked a judge to pause the execution after Pike’s botched execution attempt, CBS News reported.
However, courts denied their requests. Howard was given a fatal dose of pentobarbital at the state prison in Huntsville, and was pronounced dead at 20:03 local time. Howard was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2000 murder of a convenience store clerk during a robbery committed by him. He was 20 years old when he shot Vickie Swartout, 42, who was working at a convenience store in Texas. Howard stole a carton of cigarettes and $114 from the register.
On being asked if he had a final statement before being put to death, Howard reportedly apologized to Swartout’s family, who watched from a witness room. “I’m sorry for what happened. I wish you can learn to forgive me one of these days.”
“I wish that you accept my apology, and I wish for your forgiveness,” Howard said.
She received two doses of the drug in a failed attempt by the state of Tennessee to execute her on Wednesday, September 30. Pike’s attorneys said in a statement on Tuesday, October 6, that she remains handcuffed and shackled despite having sustained significant injuries to her arms after two injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her, NBC News reported. Pike was put on a ventilator after the failed execution attempt, with hospital staff working to save her life and clear the pentobarbital she was administered from her system.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Pike has woken up and begun speaking from her hospital bed almost a week after her failed execution, her lawyers said, per the BBC. Experts and her lawyers have said that the new development is “medically unprecedented.
They previously stated in a court filing that they believed problems with intravenous lines caused the pentobarbital to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream.
