Attorneys for a Texas death row inmate are asking a court to block his scheduled execution Wednesday, pointing to last week’s botched lethal injection in Tennessee as evidence that the same drug planned for use in Texas poses serious risks.
Jamaal Howard, 46, is set to be executed for the 2000 murder of convenience store clerk Vickie Swartout in Silsbee, a small town roughly 100 miles northeast of Houston. Surveillance footage shown at trial captured Howard shooting the 42-year-old woman once in the chest before stealing $114 and a carton of cigarettes.
Howard’s legal team filed a motion in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals arguing that the state’s supply of pentobarbital the same drug used in Tennessee’s failed execution of Christa Pike may be compromised. They contend the drug has surpassed its allowable expiration dates and could pose a risk of a similarly failed procedure.
Pike, 50, survived two full doses of pentobarbital during her attempted execution last week. As of Tuesday she was awake and speaking. Her attorneys have alleged the procedure was plagued by blown veins, degraded drugs and inadequate emergency medical response.
Howard’s lawyers argued they have been unable to obtain basic information about the condition of Texas’s lethal injection drugs. They say the Texas Department of Criminal Justice sought an attorney general opinion on whether it must disclose that information and that the opinion is not expected before Wednesday’s scheduled execution leaving Howard unable to legally challenge whatever decision the state makes.
Howard’s execution would be the first carried out in the United States since Pike’s failed procedure in Tennessee.
Beyond the drug concerns his attorneys have also argued he is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution under a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The state has countered that Howard has not met the legal threshold required to establish such a claim. He also has a pending appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Howard was 20 years old at the time of the killing. Texas has already executed six people in 2026 and has two more scheduled after Howard which would mark the 30th execution nationally this year.
Florida leads all states with 16 executions carried out so far in 2026. Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Lee has suspended the one remaining execution in that state for the rest of the year following the Pike incident.