From the HERE City National Desk
Texas executed Jamaal Howard on Wednesday evening, the first execution in the United States since Tennessee failed to put Christa Pike to death with the same drug last week.
Howard, 46, was pronounced dead at 8:03 p.m. at the state prison in Huntsville after receiving a lethal dose of pentobarbital. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected two requests to stop the execution over concerns about the drug, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied a final appeal Wednesday evening without comment.
His lawyers had also written to Gov. Greg Abbott asking for a 30-day delay while they sought information from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice about whether the state’s supply of pentobarbital was safe to use.
Pike survived two doses of the drug during a Sept. 30 execution attempt in Tennessee. Gov. Bill Lee has since barred further lethal injections in Tennessee for the rest of the year and ordered an investigation into what went wrong.
Howard was 20 when he robbed a convenience store in Silsbee, north of Beaumont, and fatally shot 42-year-old clerk Vickie Swartout. He was convicted in Hardin County less than a year later. In a final statement, he apologized to members of the victim’s family who watched the execution.
Howard was the 30th person executed nationwide in 2026, and Texas has two more lethal injections scheduled.
