HUNTSVILLE, Texas: Two executions in Texas and Oklahoma on Thursday pushed the US tally to 37 this year, putting the country on track to exceed 40 for a second consecutive year, a pace driven by Florida.
Texas put to death John Allen Rubio, 46, who was convicted of fatally stabbing and beheading three young children in 2003. Hours earlier, Oklahoma executed James Pavatt, 73, for the 2001 fatal shooting of his girlfriend’s estranged husband.
The death penalty has drawn renewed attention since the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee in September. Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he would commute hundreds of death sentences before leaving office in January, which experts say would be the largest mass clemency in American history.
Rubio was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. after a lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville. The killings of the baby girl and two toddlers so rocked the city of Brownsville, on the US border with Mexico, that the apartment building was later demolished and the land turned into a park and community garden.
After a spiritual adviser prayed over him briefly, Rubio thanked friends and family for their “love and understanding” and said he was “not the same person I once was.”
