Update Friday:
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Texas has executed an inmate convicted of the drug-related killings of four people more than 30 years ago, including a woman who was 9-months pregnant.
Arthur Brown Jr., 52, insisted he was innocent before receiving a lethal injection Thursday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the June 1992 slayings, which took place in a Houston home during a drug robbery.
Authorities said Brown was part of a ring that shuttled drugs from Texas to Alabama and had bought drugs from Jose Tovar and his wife Rachel Tovar.
Killed during the drug robbery were 32-year-old Jose Tovar; his wife’s 17-year-old son, Frank Farias; 19-year-old Jessica Quizones, the pregnant girlfriend of another son of Rachel Tovar; and 21-year-old neighbor Audrey Brown. All four had been tied up and shot in the head. Rachel Tovar and another person were also shot but survived.
Brown was defiant in his final statement.
“What is happening here tonight isn’t justice,” he said. “It’s the murder of another innocent man.”
He said he’d proved his innocence “but the courts blocked me.”
As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital took effect, he took two deep breaths, gasped and then began snoring. After six snores all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead 17 minutes later, at 6:37 p.m.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who was among the execution witnesses, disputed Brown’s claims of innocence.
“He has been the beneficiary of a judicial system that bent over backward at the local, state and federal levels, all the way to the United States Supreme Court, who have all affirmed his conviction and sentence,” she said.
(Copyright 2023, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Original Story:
(WBAP/KLIF) — After killing four people more than 30 years ago, a Texas inmate is set to die Thursday night.
Arthur Brown Jr. brutally murdered four people during a drug robbery at a Houston home while in his early 20s. Police say the 1992 killings were part of a ring that transported drugs from Texas to Alabama.
Now the 52-year-old is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Thursday night at the State Penitentiary in Huntsville.
Brown’s attorneys are petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay, claiming he’s intellectually disabled. The convicted killer would be the fifth inmate in Texas and the ninth in the U.S. put to death this year.
Listen to WBAP/KLIF report:
(Copyright 2023 WBAP/KLIF Newsroom News. All rights reserved. Contains material from the Associated Press.)