Texas executed Edward Busby Jr. Thursday evening in Huntsville, marking the state’s 600th lethal injection since it resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1982.
Busby, 53, was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m. at the state penitentiary for the 2004 robbery and murder of 77-year-old retired Texas Christian University professor Laura Lee Crane in Fort Worth. Busby and an accomplice abducted Crane from a grocery store parking lot, robbed her, bound her with duct tape and left her to suffocate in the trunk of her car. His accomplice received a life sentence.
The execution came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay in a 6-3 decision. Busby’s attorneys had argued he was intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution under U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Experts for both the prosecution and defense had reached the same conclusion about his disability.
Texas has executed more people than any other state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty nationwide in 1976. The state’s first modern-era execution came in 1982, when Charlie Brooks became the first person in the United States put to death by lethal injection. Texas carried out 361 executions by electric chair before a nationwide moratorium in 1972.
Most of Texas’ 600 executions occurred between the mid-1990s and mid-2010s, peaking at 40 in 2000. The pace has slowed sharply in recent years as new death sentences have declined and courts have reviewed older cases. Harris County alone accounts for more than 130 executions, far more than any other county in the nation.
The milestone underscores Texas’ long-standing role as the national leader in capital punishment even as the overall use of the death penalty continues to decline across the United States.
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