Texas executes Jamaal Howard, the first U.S. execution since the botched Pike case

Texas carried out the first execution in the United States since a Tennessee execution went catastrophically wrong eight days earlier, and it used the same drug.

Jamaal Howard, 46, was put to death by lethal injection Wednesday evening for the 2000 murder of Vickie Swartout, a convenience store clerk. The Supreme Court rejected his emergency appeal, though Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented publicly, continuing her pattern of recorded objections in capital cases.

The shadow over the execution was Christa Pike. On September 30, Tennessee attempted to execute Pike with pentobarbital, the same single drug sedative used in Texas. Pike survived two doses. The botched execution triggered a national reckoning over lethal injection protocols, with critics arguing the drug supply chain and the secrecy around it make every execution an uncontrolled experiment.

Texas proceeded anyway, and the execution went forward without the reported complications that marked Tennessee's attempt. Whether that proves the protocol works or just proves that the same drug behaves differently in different bodies is the argument the next case will be fought over. Howard's death ends a 26 year wait for the family of Vickie Swartout. The argument over how America kills its condemned is not ending.