Texas Executes Man After Supreme Court Rejects Appeal Over Lethal-Injection Drug

Texas executed Jamaal Howard, 46, on October 7 after the US Supreme Court declined to stop the sentence. Howard was convicted of the 2000 killing of convenience-store clerk Vickie Swartout during a robbery in Silsbee, Texas. His lawyers had argued that the state should not use pentobarbital, citing reports that Tennessee inmate Christa Pike survived two doses of the same drug during a recent execution attempt. They also argued that Howard was intellectually disabled, but Texas said he did not meet the legal standard. Witnesses said Howard gasped, coughed and made snoring sounds after the drug was administered before becoming still. He was pronounced dead 19 minutes later. The execution took place as a Tennessee court ordered officials to preserve evidence connected to Pike's failed execution attempt.

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