Death row inmate next in line for lethal injection after Christa Pike’s botched attempt
Texas death row inmate Jamaal Howard is set to become the first person to be executed following the botched attempt on Christa Pike.
Howard is set to be executed on 7 October for the 2000 murder of Vickie Swartout during an attempted robbery.
Howard was 20 at the time of the killing and has spent more than two decades on death row.
His legal team has attempted to fight the execution and requested an emergency reprieve from Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
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His lawyers claim that Howard, 46, has an intellectual disability and a long history of severe mental illness.
Howard’s spiritual advisor Reverend Jeff Hood told 12 News Now that at his trial, psychiatrists who examined Howard found his IQ to be in the 65 to 70 range and described him as functioning at the level of an 11- or 12-year-old.
His legal team have also raised concerns following Pike’s recent execution attempt that went badly wrong.
Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital at her scheduled execution on 30 September and was rushed to hospital for life-saving treatment.
On Tuesday (6 October), her legal team said she is ‘conscious and speaking’.
"Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care,” they said.
"Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery."
In the wake of the botched execution attempt, the state of Tennessee announced a halt on all scheduled executions.
In court filings made by Howard’s lawyers, they note that he is at risk of receiving the same type of lethal injection as Pike.
The filing states: “Ms. Pike survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital, the same drug used in executions in Texas, and she reportedly remains hospitalised in critical condition.”
The reprieve request continues: “When an execution goes wrong, one of the first questions anyone asks is whether the drug was what the State said it was. “Tennessee’s own officials cannot yet answer that, and the answer lies in records: when the drug was bought, from whom, how it was stored, and what testing was done and when. Texas should not wait until after a failed execution to ask the same questions.
“We do not know why Ms. Pike’s execution failed, and we, specifically, do not know whether the failure was due to the pentobarbital’s being ineffective.”
In an article for the Texas Observer ahead of the execution, Hood claimed that Howard ‘didn’t understand how executions were carried out’ and that he had not heard of the Pike case.
Hood said he told Howard that in Pike’s case the drugs didn’t work, to which he replied: “I guess if the drugs don’t work, they’ll just shoot me in the head.”
He said that he told Howard that executions didn’t work but claimed he ‘literally had no understanding of the protocol by which he was going to be executed or what would happen if something went wrong’.
Claire Reid