A man who experts for both prosecutors and defense attorneys had said was intellectually disabled became the 600th person executed in Texas since 1982, put to death Thursday evening for the killing of a retired 77-year-old college professor, the AP reports. Edward Busby Jr. was pronounced dead at 8:11pm local time following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. The execution followed a series of last-minute legal efforts by Busby's attorneys in a bid to spare his life after the nation's high court lifted a stay over his disabilities claims hours earlier. The execution was the 600th in Texas since the state resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1982.
Busby was condemned for the suffocation death of Laura Lee Crane, a 77-year-old retired professor from Texas Christian University. Prosecutors have said Busby and his co-defendant, Kathleen Latimer, abducted Crane in her car from a Fort Worth grocery store parking lot in January 2004 and later put her in her vehicle's trunk as they drove around. Prosecutors said she died in the trunk after suffocating from having 23 feet of duct tape wrapped over her entire face, covering her mouth and nose. Busby appeared extremely contrite when asked by the warden if he had a final statement, repeatedly apologizing and asking for forgiveness—before the drugs began flowing.
Busby's execution had been in doubt after the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals last week issued a stay of execution to further review his claims of intellectual disability. But the Supreme Court allowed the execution to proceed after overturning the stay Thursday at the request of the Texas Attorney General's Office. Later Thursday evening, Busby's lawyers again asked the 5th Circuit for an 11th-hour stay but were quickly denied. The Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of intellectually disabled people. But it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities.
Busby's attorneys had argued against his being put to death because a defense expert as well as one hired by the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office, which prosecuted the case, both found he was intellectually disabled. The district attorney's office had previously recommended that Busby's sentence be reduced to life in prison. But the trial judge in Busby's case disagreed with the findings of intellectual disability and in 2023 upheld the death sentence. In a statement Wednesday, the district attorney's office said it requested Thursday's execution date because it believed that under current law Busy was not intellectually disabled.
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