Texas Executes 600th Inmate Amid Disability Claims

Edward Busby Jr. was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas, on Thursday evening, marking the 600th execution in the state since it reinstated the death penalty in 1982. Busby was condemned for the 2004 suffocation death of Laura Lee Crane, a 77-year-old retired college professor.

Last-minute legal efforts by Busby's attorneys, focusing on claims of intellectual disability, were ultimately unsuccessful. The U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay of execution that had been granted by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review these claims. Experts for both the prosecution and defense had indicated Busby was intellectually disabled, yet the trial judge upheld his death sentence.

Prosecutors stated that Busby and his co-defendant, Kathleen Latimer, abducted Crane from a grocery store parking lot and left her to suffocate in the trunk of her car with duct tape covering her face. Latimer is currently serving a life sentence for murder. Busby's execution was the fourth in Texas this year and the twelfth nationwide.