Texas Man on Death Row Attempting to Stop Execution After Tennessee Debacle

HUNTSVILLE, TX — A Texas death row inmate convicted of a fatal 2000 robbery is set to be executed at 6 p.m. this evening, but his lawyers are trying to get a last-minute reprieve due to a botched execution last week in Tennessee.

Jamaal Howard was 20 years old when he robbed a convenience store and shot the clerk, killing 42-year-old Vickie Swartout, in Silsbee, north of Beaumont. Howard was convicted less than a year later and sentenced to death in Hardin County. 

Now Howard is scheduled to be the first person put to death in the country since the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee on Sept. 30.

Pike, who was convicted in 1996 of killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, regained consciousness and is speaking after her failed lethal injection, her lawyers said Tuesday.

Texas, where the first execution by lethal injection was conducted in 1982, also utilizes pentobarbital for its executions. Lawyers for Howard sent a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott asking for him to delay his execution by 30 days as they await information from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice about whether the state’s stock of the drug is safe to use.

“We do not ask you to decide anything about Mr. Howard’s case other than this: that he should not be executed with a drug whose history the State has refused to let his lawyers see, within days of the same drug failing in another state,” Howard’s lawyers wrote.

Texas uses pentobarbital compounded in pharmacies because drug manufacturers refuse to sell the drug for use in executions. Because of the resulting limited supply, the state tests vials of the drug it has and extends its use date if they determine it will work effectively.

In 2023 before the execution of Robert Fratta, a Travis County district judge temporarily barred use of the drug over concerns about the practice. The execution was ultimately carried out after the ruling was overturned by Texas’ Court of Criminal Appeals.

Howard has had numerous unsuccessful appeals since his conviction, the latest of which was denied on Monday by the CCA. That appeal and an application for a stay of execution is now awaiting a response from the U.S. Supreme Court.

That appeals argues that Howard suffers from mental illness and is intellectually disabled, which would make him ineligible for the death penalty under Eighth Amendment protections. Before his trial, the court held two competency hearings at the state’s request to determine Howard’s fitness. The jury deadlocked the first time, and ruled he was fit in the second after Howard’s attorney did not call their expert witness, according to court records.

If executed, Howard would be the seventh man executed in Texas this year. Two more men are scheduled to be put to death in 2026. 

John Rubio, convicted of the 2003 murders of his three children, is the next man scheduled to be executed. Rubio had also raised issues with the state’s use of pentobarbital, suing the state in August alongside another death row inmate, LeJames Norman — who has since been executed — in an effort to block Texas’ use of the drug and subsequently their executions.

The suit argued that Texas’ supply of the drug was either expired or created through unreliable means at the third-party compounding facilities. The CCA blocked the judge in the case after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a request with the appellate court asking it to do so, arguing that the lower court lacked the ability to block criminal proceedings through a civil suit.