Texas Executes Jamaal Howard With Same Drug Used in Pike's Failed Execution as Her Lawyers Report Pneumonia and Blood Clot

Since Tennessee failed to kill Christa Pike on Sept. 30, the question has moved from what went wrong in Nashville to whether the same drug can be trusted elsewhere. Texas answered that Wednesday night.

Texas goes ahead

Jamaal Howard, 46, was pronounced dead at 8:03 p.m. at the state prison in Huntsville after receiving pentobarbital. He was convicted of capital murder for the 2000 killing of Vickie Swartout, a 42-year-old convenience store clerk in Silsbee. She was shot once in the chest. Howard, then 20, took $114 from the register.

His lawyers asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to halt the execution, citing Pike. "Texas should not be eager to follow in Tennessee's footsteps," they wrote. They also argued the state's supply could be degraded, saying the drugs were "far past the original beyond-use dates that the pharmacopeia allows for drugs of this kind."

The state court denied two requests without explanation. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a late appeal without comment. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly dissented, according to Fox News. The Fifth Circuit had already declined to stop it last week.

Texas officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Nothing in the filings establishes that Texas's drug supply is actually compromised. That claim comes from Howard's lawyers, and no court ruled on it. The lawyers also said they had asked the Texas Department of Criminal Justice about the dose and received no information.

The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty had urged Gov. Greg Abbott to grant a reprieve so Howard's lawyers could obtain records on "when the drug was bought, how it was stored, and what testing was done and when." Abbott did not grant one.

According to the Associated Press account of the execution, Howard took a couple of breaths and gasped, then made snoring sounds and coughed. Movement stopped after about 30 seconds. Death was pronounced 19 minutes after the injection began.

Howard apologized to Swartout's family, who watched from a viewing window feet from the chamber. "I wish that you accept my apology and I wish for your forgiveness," he said.

The disability claim

Howard's second argument was that he is intellectually disabled and therefore barred from execution under the Supreme Court's 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia. His lawyers cited a full-scale IQ of 74 and trial testimony from 2001 about his adaptive deficits. They wrote that "no court has ever decided whether Howard is intellectually disabled under the clinical standards that govern today."

Texas told the court Howard's attorneys had not presented evidence showing he met the legal criteria. The justices gave no reasoning for turning him away.

Howard is the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year. By Euronews' count, Texas has now carried out seven executions in 2026, up from five in each of 2025 and 2024. John Rubio and Reinaldo Dennes are scheduled for November.

Pike's condition

Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Her attorneys now describe a far worse picture than the one Tennessee offered a week ago.

Attorney Randy Spivey said at a news conference outside Davidson County Chancery Court that Pike has pneumonia, a blood clot in one arm, and cannot swallow. Her arms and hands are "tremendously swollen." "Her hands looked like if you were to blow up a surgical glove," he said. "We don't know what function she will regain."

Spivey said the legal team was told Monday that Pike was brain-dead and was expected to come off life support. By Tuesday she was awake. Her first words, as he understands them, were "Where am I?" and "Who are you?" He said he has no explanation for the turnaround.

Another member of her team, lawyer Stephen Ferrell, told BBC Radio 4 late Wednesday that Pike was up and walking around her hospital room for the first time, though still "foggy." "She can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she's going," he said. Ferrell said he had not spoken to her directly.

Pike's team has described her as angry and confused. Those descriptions all come from her lawyers. The Tennessee Department of Correction has not publicly detailed her medical status.

Evidence order

At an emergency hearing Wednesday, Chancellor I'Ashea Myles ordered the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve "relevant evidence" from Sept. 30. That covers drugs, IV lines, needles, catheters, restraints, the gurney, packaging and labels, and all written and digital records, including encrypted messages and witness accounts.

Myles told the department "not to lose, misplace, accidentally delete" anything pertinent. If material has already been discarded, she said, the state must "take an affirmative step to try to claw back that information."

The order could set up a lawsuit against the state. No suit has been announced.

Tennessee's response

Gov. Bill Lee has delayed Pike's execution until at least next year, barred further lethal injections in Tennessee for the rest of 2026, and ordered an investigation into why the procedure failed. Pike's lawyers had argued before the execution that a blood disorder would make lethal injection painful. The Guardian notes speculation about the quality of the pentobarbital, but no official finding has identified a cause.

The Death Penalty Information Center counts at least 64 botched executions in the U.S. since 1982, 10 of them in Texas. It identifies Pike as the only known person to survive an attempted lethal injection.

Two things remain open: what Lee's investigation finds about the drug and the procedure, and whether the preservation order surfaces records that Tennessee's own staff did not expect anyone to see.