HOUSTON – An American man convicted of a quadruple murder linked to drug trafficking more than 30 years ago was executed in Texas yesterday.
Arthur Brown Jr, 52, received a lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, in the eastern part of the vast southern US state, the state prisons board said.
This made Brown the fifth death row inmate to be executed in the conservative state and the ninth nationwide since the beginning of the year.
In his final statement released by the Texas Criminal Justice Department, Brown insisted he was treated unfairly over the years as his case made its way through the courts and again said he did not commit the killings he was convicted of.
“What is occurring here tonight is not justice, it’s murder of an innocent man for a murder that occurred in 1992,” Brown said, according to the board.
Prosecutors say that in 1992, Brown and two accomplices tied up and shot six people in the back of the head in the home of Brown’s drug supplier in Houston.
Four of the victims, including a minor and a pregnant woman, were killed, and two survived.
Brown was arrested four months later and sentenced to death in 1994, although he has always maintained his innocence.
His alleged accomplices were also convicted in the murders: one was executed in 2006, and the other is serving a life sentence.
Brown’s lawyers had asked the United States Supreme Court, which has banned the death penalty for the intellectually disabled, to halt the execution, arguing that Brown was mentally unfit.
And a court in Houston earlier this week denied a request by Brown’s attorneys, who argued that his conviction was based on unreliable testimony and asked that new DNA evidence be reviewed.
British billionaire Richard Branson advocated for Brown, calling for the execution to be stopped.
“Mr Brown’s intellectual disability alone should be reason enough not to execute him,” Branson said on his website. – AFP, March 10, 2023
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