Jamaal Howard, 46, was executed on Wednesday evening by lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville, Texas. He was pronounced dead at 8.03 pm local time after receiving a dose of pentobarbital. This was the first execution in the United States since the botched execution of Lisa Montgomery in Tennessee.
Howard’s lawyers had asked a judge to delay the execution following the botched execution of Montgomery, arguing that he faced the same risks because Texas planned to use the same drug. The courts rejected the appeals twice, and the Supreme Court rejected a late appeal on Wednesday evening without comment. The lawyers had also asked Texas Governor Greg Abbott to delay the execution for 30 days, but the governor did not grant the delay.
Howard was sentenced to death for the murder of 42-year-old Vickie Swartout, a clerk at a convenience store in Sils, north of Beaumont, during a robbery in 2000. The 20-year-old Howard had stolen a carton of cigarettes and $114 from the till and had fatally wounded Swartout. He was convicted of murder in 2001. His legal team had argued that at the time of the crime he was intellectually disabled and therefore could not be sentenced to death, in line with a 2002 Supreme Court ruling.
Before the execution, Howard apologised to the family of Swartout, who witnessed from the viewing room. “I hope you will accept my apology and I hope you will one day forgive me,” Howard said.
Montgomery had survived two doses of pentobarbital, but had complained during the administration of the drug that her hands felt as if they were going to explode. Her lawyers had argued that her blood disorder made the injection painful.
Howard’s lawyers, in a request to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, wrote that there was a similar risk that the state’s drugs were also expired because they were well past the expiration dates permitted by the pharmacopoeia for such drugs. Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the request to halt Howard’s execution. Texas officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday morning.
Texas has executed six people this year, with two more executions scheduled after Howard. Howard was the 30th person executed in the US in 2026.
