Houston, United States | An American was executed this Thursday in Texas, more than thirty years after a quadruple murder linked to drug trafficking, and which he denied having committed.
Arthur Brown Jr, 52, received a lethal injection in a state prison in the city of Huntsville, in the southern United States, local authorities reported. He was pronounced dead at 6:37 p.m. local time.
Brown became the fifth death row inmate to be executed in the conservative state of Texas and the ninth nationwide since the beginning of the year.
In his final statement released by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Brown insisted that he was treated unfairly over the years as his case went to court and again said that he did not commit the murders for which he was convicted.
“What is happening here tonight is not justice, it is the murder of an innocent man for a murder that occurred in 1992,” Brown said, according to an official report.
According to the prosecution, in 1992 he went with two accomplices to the house of his drug supplier in Houston. After tying up the six occupants of the premises, they were shot in the back of the head.
Four of his victims, including a minor and a pregnant woman, died and two survived.
Brown was arrested four months later and sentenced to death in 1994, although he has always maintained his innocence. His alleged accomplices were also convicted in the murders: one was executed in 2006 and the other is serving a life sentence.
Brown’s lawyers had asked the US Supreme Court, which has banned the death penalty for people with intellectual disabilities, to halt the execution, arguing that Brown is mentally unfit.
And a court in Houston earlier this week rejected a request by Brown’s lawyers who argued that his conviction was based on unreliable testimony and asked that new DNA evidence be reviewed.
British billionaire Richard Branson advocated for Brown and called for the execution to be halted.
“Mr. Brown’s intellectual disability alone should be reason enough not to execute him,” Branson said on his website.