10 March 2023 :
(March 9, 2023) - Arthur Brown Jr., 52, Black, was executed. He received a lethal injection Thursday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
"What is happening here tonight isn't justice," he said. "It's the murder of another innocent man." After his speech, he was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 6:20 p.m., and pronounced dead 17 minutes later.
Brown was sentenced to death on June 30, 1994 in Harris County for the June 20, 1992 deaths in a Houston home during a drug robbery.
Killed during the drug robbery were 32-year-old Jose Tovar; his wife's 17-year-old son, Frank Farias; 19-year-old Jessica Quiñones, the seven months pregnant girlfriend of another son of Rachel Tovar; and 21-year-old neighbour Audrey Brown. Rachel Tovar and another person were also shot but survived.
One of Brown's accomplices in the shootings, Marion Dudley, was executed in 2006. A third partner was sentenced to life in prison.
His attorneys have asked to halt the execution arguing that Brown is intellectually disabled, a claim disputed by prosecutors.
Brown was one of six Texas death row inmates participating in a lawsuit seeking to stop the state's prison system from using what they allege are expired and unsafe execution drugs. Despite a civil court judge in Austin preliminarily agreeing with the claims, five of the inmates have been executed this year.
Brown becomes the 5th inmate to be put death this year in Texas, the 583rd overall since Texas resumed capital punishment in 1982, the 9th inmate put to death this year in the U.S., and the 1,567th overall since the nation resumed executions in 1977.
