Texas Resumes Executions

Texas resumed executions yesterday after a 5-month hiatus that was due in part to Covid-19 and in part to flaps over whether clergymen would be allowed in the execution chamber. Juan Lozano and Michael Graczyk report for AP:

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas inmate received lethal injection Wednesday evening for fatally shooting an 82-year-old man nearly three decades ago, ending a five-month delay of executions in the nation’s busiest death penalty state because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Billy Joe Wardlow was put to death at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the June 1993 killing of Carl Cole at his home in Cason, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) east of Dallas in the East Texas piney woods, near the Louisiana and Arkansas borders.

 *      *      *

“Wardlow senselessly executed elderly Carl Cole to steal his truck, something that could have been taken without violence because the keys were in it,” the Texas attorney general’s office said in a petition filed with the Supreme Court.

The court also denied petitions from Wardlow over claims of ineffective assistance of counsel and related to the dismissal of a previous appeal in state and federal court. On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down his clemency petition.

The execution confirmed, once again, that the single-drug method with pentobarbital produces a death that is sufficiently painless to be below any conceivable threshold required by the Eighth Amendment:

As the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital was administered, he took three deep breaths, snored twice and then took a couple shallow breaths before all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead 24 minutes later, at 6:52 p.m. CDT.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Wardlow’s claim that it should further raise the minimum age for execution, along with other claims. The rejection orders are here, here, and here, with no dissent noted.