Texas Executes Jamaal Howard

Texas executed Jamaal Howard by lethal injection Wednesday, the first U.S. execution since Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike. Howard was pronounced dead at 8:03 p.m. after courts rejected his requests for a stay and the U.S. Supreme Court denied his emergency appeal, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting. Howard was sentenced to death for fatally shooting convenience-store clerk Vickie Swartout during a 2000 robbery in Silsbee, Texas. His lawyers said he was intellectually disabled and raised concerns about degraded pentobarbital; Texas said he had not met the state’s requirements for that claim. Tennessee has paused executions this year while an outside investigation proceeds.