Texas put convicted killer Jamaal Howard to death with the same drug that failed in Tennessee a week before, after the Supreme Court refused to step in.
Story Snapshot
- Howard was executed on Wednesday, October 7, and pronounced dead at 8:03 p.m. in Huntsville.
- He was put to death for shooting store clerk Vickie Swartout during a 2000 robbery that netted $114.
- His lawyers argued the drug, pentobarbital, had failed a week earlier on Tennessee inmate Christa Pike.
- The Supreme Court turned down his emergency appeal; only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
The Crime Behind The Sentence
On May 12, 2000, Howard, then 20, robbed a convenience store in Silsbee, Texas. He shot clerk Vickie Swartout, 42, once in the chest and took $114 from the register, along with a carton of cigarettes, according to reports. Security cameras caught the killing. A jury convicted him of capital murder in 2001. He was 46 when he died.
His lawyers fought the execution on two fronts. First, they pointed to Tennessee. On Sept. 30, Tennessee tried to execute Christa Pike, a woman on its death row, with two doses of pentobarbital, and she survived. She is the first person known to live through a lethal injection in the modern era, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Pentobarbital is a powerful sedative used in lethal injections. “Texas should not be eager to follow in Tennessee’s footsteps; a stay would keep that from happening,” Howard’s lawyers wrote. A stay is a court order that pauses an execution.
Second, they argued Howard was intellectually disabled, which would bar his execution under Supreme Court rulings. The state said his lawyers had not shown evidence that met the legal test. A 2017 review had not found him intellectually disabled, according to reports.
Courts Say No
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court for criminal cases, turned down two requests to stop the execution over the drug. The U.S. Supreme Court then rejected his emergency appeal without giving a reason. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to publicly dissent. Reports did not quote any written opinion from her.
The Final Minutes
As the drug took effect, Howard took a couple of breaths and gasped, according to witnesses quoted in reports. He made snoring sounds, coughed, and snored again more and more quietly. His movements stopped after about 30 seconds. He was pronounced dead 19 minutes later.
In his last words, Howard spoke to Swartout’s family. “I wish that you accept my apology and I wish for your forgiveness,” he said. He also thanked his relatives and friends and told them he loved them.
Justice For Vickie Swartout
Swartout was working a normal shift when she was killed for $114. Her family waited more than 26 years for the sentence to be carried out. Howard’s case went through years of appeals, and in the end every court that heard his last claims let the jury’s verdict stand.
Texas went forward while Tennessee’s failure was still fresh. On the same Wednesday, a Tennessee judge ordered that state to preserve the evidence from Pike’s failed execution. Howard’s death was the 30th execution in the United States in 2026, according to reports.
Sources:
foxnews.com, cbsnews.com, abc13.com, ibtimes.co.uk, supremecourt.gov, aa.com.tr
