Texas carries out nation’s first execution since Tennessee’s botched attempt

By Ayden Runnels, The Texas Tribune
October 7, 2026

A Texas death row inmate convicted of a fatal 2000 robbery who was executed Wednesday night was the first person put to death in the country since a failed execution in Tennessee that has raised alarm over lethal injection.

Jamaal Howard was executed by lethal injection and pronounced deceased at 8:03 p.m., according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. In his final statement, Howard apologized to the family of the woman he was convicted of killing and thanked his family.

“I wish that you accept my apology, and I wish for your forgiveness,” Howard said. “I’m sorry for what happened, I wish you can learn to forgive me one of these days.”

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.

Howard’s execution is the first carried out in the United States since a Sept. 30 attempt in Tennessee. Christa Pike survived after twice being injected with the lethal drug pentobarbital. Pike, who was convicted in 1996 of killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, regained consciousness and is speaking after the failed execution, 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.

Abbott did not respond to the letter, and his office did not respond to questions prior to the execution asking if he intended to do so.

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, a process critics have said is unsafe.

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 had several unsuccessful appeals since his conviction, the latest of which were filed Wednesday morning and was subsequently denied by the CCA. That appeal and two other appeals filed with the U.S. Supreme Court briefly delayed Howard’s execution before the courts rejected the petitions.

Howard’s petition to the Supreme Court argued that he suffered from mental illness and was intellectually disabled, which made 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.

Howard was 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.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.