Texas Executes Inmate Quintin Jones, Ends Capital Pause

Texas applied the death penalty to a prisoner on Wednesday for the first time in about 10 months, indicating that that state will resume executions after a pause during the pandemic

Quintin Jones , by 41 years, he was executed by the state of Texas Wednesday night, breaking a break of 10 months in the application of the death penalty in the state.

Jones was executed by a murder committed more than 20 years in 1999, Jones was convicted of to beat his great-aunt Berthena Bryant to death with a baseball bat, of 83 years, when she refused to give him $ 30 dollars for drugs, according to court documents. He was sentenced to the death penalty on 2001 in Tarrant County and has been on death row ever since.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued multiple stays of executions in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic – 19. Jones’s death is the first execution in the state since July 8, 2020 , reported CBS News .

Jones, who had 19 years when he committed that murder, he did not deny having committed it and He was not asking to be pardoned for his crime, but said it changed his life in prison and he should not be executed. In a video posted by The New York Times last week , Jones asked the governor Gregg Abbott that “seek in his heart to grant me the pardon “.

In Opinion

Quintin Jones first wrote to Suleika Jaouad in 2012, when she was being treated for leukemia and he was on death row in Texas. “Today, I tell the story of our friendship in the hope that it will save his life,” Jaouad writes in her guest essay. https://t.co/nv6Hwemnuk pic.twitter.com/tTFZWJ51 gives

– The New York Times (@nytimes) May 10, 1267912

But on Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended not granting him a pardon .

Abbott, a Republican, could have granted a clemency from 30 days, but the board’s opposition almost assured that the execution would continue, reported NBC News.

The case d e Jones had gained renewed attention for other reasons: some of his family members publicly supported his request for clemency. of the death penalty , writing that he “is sorry and has changed for the better” and that kill him “can’t bring her back ”.

Furthermore, the case required that the jury, when applying the death penalty, determined that Jones posed a “future dangerousness”, a concept which critics say is based on inaccurate and controversial scientific data, and could be clouded by racial bias. The request for pardon of Jones said he had a “non-violent history during his two decades of incarceration.”

Family members of Quintin Jones, of 41 years, they expected the United States Supreme Court or Governor Abbott will spare his life or grant him a pardon last minute . But this did not happen.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice continued with Jones’ execution, which occurred just before 7 p.m. by lethal injection, at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, the Associated Press reported.

Governor Abbott has only commuted a sentence of death penalty since he took office in 2015. In the past six years, Texas has executed more than 50 people, the last time in July, and also the last time a state carried out an execution during 2020.

The federal government under the Trump administration resumed executions during the pandemic .