Lawyers looking to block Texas man's execution following Christa Pike's botched execution
The Hill · C · trust 50/100
Comments: by Mira Bhakta - 10/07/26 5:11 PM ET Comments: Link copied by Mira Bhakta - 10/07/26 5:11 PM ET Comments: Link copied NOW PLAYING Lawyers for a Texas death row inmate are looking to block his execution following the botched lethal injection attempts against Christa Pike in Tennessee.
Jamaal Howard is scheduled for execution by lethal injection on Oct. 7 at 7 p.m. EDT, marking the first time an inmate has been put to death since the incident with Pike — who is still alive days after the state’s failed attempts to execute her. His lawyers are looking to stop the execution, citing Texas’s drug of choice — pentobarbital — which was also used in Pike’s two botched injections, according to The Associated Press .
Howard’s lawyers also said they believed the state’s drug supply had become degraded in their appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
On Sept. 30, Pike received two doses of pentobarbital and survived. She was taken from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in an ambulance to a Nashville-area hospital. Her legal team said Tuesday she was alive and speaking following the lethal doses but sustained “severe damage” to her arms.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) ordered that Pike’s execution be delayed until at least next year.
Howard was found guilty of capital murder for killing Vickie Swartout in 2000, when he was 20, during an attempted robbery. According to court filings, Howard took $114 and cigarettes from a store, located about 100 miles north of Houston.
Attorneys for Howard previously appealed the execution to the Supreme Court, arguing that he is mentally disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty.
“No court has ever decided whether Howard is intellectually disabled under the clinical standards that govern today,” his lawyers wrote in the appeal . “Under those standards, his full-scale IQ of 74 and the sworn testimony from his 2001 trial describing his adaptive deficits at ages 20 and 21 make far more than the threshold showing required to have his claim heard.”
In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that executing inmates with mental disabilities was unconstitutional, though the court left it up to the states to determine who qualifies as disabled. In another case, the court invalidated a Florida law that determined mental disability using an IQ thresholding.
The Death Penalty Information Center estimates there have been at least 64 instances of botched executions across the U.S. since 1982 — 10 of which were in Texas.
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