Overview
- Texas executed Edward Lee Busby Jr. on Thursday night at the Huntsville prison, with officials saying he was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m. CDT.
- The U.S. Supreme Court earlier Thursday vacated a 5th Circuit stay that had paused the execution, with three liberal justices dissenting and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticizing the rush.
- The 5th Circuit had issued the stay last week to review new testing and expert findings that labeled Busby intellectually disabled, including an expert retained by the Tarrant County district attorney.
- Despite the prosecutor’s earlier recommendation to reduce the sentence to life, a trial judge in 2023 upheld the death verdict, and the Texas attorney general argued the disability claims were meritless and time barred.
- Busby was convicted for the 2004 abduction and suffocation of retired professor Laura Lee Crane, and his death marks Texas’ 600th execution since 1982, a milestone likely to intensify debate over state standards and last-minute court intervention.