After a 6-3 SCOTUS vote to vacate stay, Texas completes its sixth execution of 2023

As detailed in this AP article, a “Texas man who unsuccessfully challenged the safety of the state’s lethal injection drugs and raised questions about evidence used to persuade a jury to sentence him to death for killing an elderly woman decades ago was executed late Tuesday.”  Here is more:

Jedidiah Murphy, 48, was pronounced dead after an injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the October 2000 fatal shooting of 80-year-old Bertie Lee Cunningham of the Dallas suburb of Garland. Cunningham was killed during a carjacking….

As the lethal dose of pentobarbital took effect, he took two barely audible breaths and appeared to go to sleep, The pastor stood over him, his left hand over Murphy’s heart, until a physician entered the room about 20 minutes later to examine Murphy and pronounce him dead at 10:15 p.m., 25 minutes after the drug began….

The execution took place hours after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an order that had delayed the death sentence from being carried out. The high court late Tuesday also turned down another request to stay Murphy’s execution over claims the drugs he was injected with were exposed to extreme heat and smoke during a recent fire, making them unsafe and leaving him at risk of pain and suffering.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday had upheld a federal judge’s order from last week delaying the execution after Murphy’s lawyers filed a lawsuit seeking DNA testing of evidence presented at his 2001 trial. But the state attorney general’s office appealed the 5th Circuit’s decision, with the Supreme Court ruling in Texas’ favor.

In their filings, Murphy’s attorneys had questioned evidence of two robberies and a kidnapping used by prosecutors to persuade jurors during the penalty phase of his trial that Murphy would be a future danger — a legal finding needed to secure a death sentence in Texas. Murphy admitted he killed Cunningham but had long denied he committed the robberies or kidnapping. His attorneys argued these crimes were the strongest evidence prosecutors had to show Murphy would pose an ongoing threat, but that the evidence linking him to the crimes was problematic, including a questionable identification of Murphy by one of the victims….

Murphy was the sixth inmate in Texas and the 20th in the U.S. put to death this year…. Although Texas has been the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, it had been seven months since its last execution…. Three more executions are scheduled in Texas this year.

This order from the Supreme Court granting the request by Texas to vacate the lower court stay details that Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson voted to uphold the stay (but I have not found any opinions discussing any of the SCOTUS votes in this matter).