Huntsville: A Texas court on Wednesday refused to halt the scheduled execution of a man convicted of killing a convenience store clerk, despite his lawyers citing last week’s failed lethal injection of Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike.
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Jamaal Howard, 46, was scheduled to be executed later Wednesday, making him the first person in the United States to face execution since Pike survived an attempt in Tennessee on September 30.
Howard’s attorneys asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to block the execution because Texas planned to use pentobarbital, the same drug used in the failed attempt to execute Pike. They argued that the incident raised concerns about the drug’s safety and the quality of Texas’ execution drugs.
The court rejected the request without providing an explanation.
Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital during her execution attempt at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Tennessee. She was taken to a Nashville hospital unconscious and critically ill, with severe injuries to her arms.
Her lawyers said she regained consciousness and was speaking by Tuesday, after they had previously been told she was brain dead. They said she now faces a lengthy recovery and is suffering from pneumonia, a blood clot and severe swelling in her arms and hands.
“She is angry and confused about everything right now,” Pike’s attorney Randy Spivey told reporters, saying many questions remain about how the state handled the execution.
Pike’s legal team is seeking greater transparency and has asked that evidence from the failed execution be preserved. At a Tennessee court hearing on Wednesday, attorney Luke Ihnen said the team was not yet seeking the evidence itself but wanted state officials to ensure that records and other material were not destroyed.
A Nashville judge said Tennessee officials would be required to preserve evidence from the failed execution, including the syringes and other equipment used during the two lethal injections.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of a fellow student.
The case has drawn renewed scrutiny of lethal injection procedures and the secrecy surrounding execution protocols in Tennessee and other US states.
Texas has carried out six executions so far this year, with two more lethal injections scheduled after Howard’s. If carried out, Howard’s execution would be the 30th in the United States in 2026.
(With agency inputs from Reuters and AP via PTI)
