Texas executed a man convicted of drug-related murders more than three decades ago. According to the state prisons board, the Texas State Prison in Huntsville, in the eastern section of the vast southern US state, executed 52-year-old Arthur Brown Jr. by lethal injection.
With his execution, Brown became the ninth death row convict to be put to death in the United States this year and the fifth in the conservative state of Oklahoma.
In his final statement, made public by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Brown reiterated his insistence that he was not responsible for the murders for which he was convicted and reiterated his belief that he had been mistreated throughout the years the case had been pending.
For a crime in 1992, “what is going here today is not justice,” Brown reportedly told the board. In 1992, Brown and two accomplices, according to prosecutors, tied up and shot six individuals at the Houston home of Brown’s narcotics supplier.
Two victims made it out alive, while the other four, including a child and a pregnant mother, perished. Although he has always claimed his innocence, Brown was apprehended four months later and sentenced to death in 1994.
Two others accused of helping him carry out the murders have also been convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
While the US Supreme Court has previously prohibited the death penalty for the intellectually challenged, Brown’s attorneys had argued that he should not be executed.
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Yet Brown’s lawyers, who claimed his conviction was based on false testimony and demanded that additional DNA evidence be considered, had their motion refused by a court in Houston earlier this week.
Richard Branson, a British business magnate and vocal supporter of Brown pleaded with authorities to halt the execution. Branson argued on his website that Mr. Brown’s intellectual handicap was sufficient to spare his life.