A Texas man was executed by lethal injection Tuesday evening for the murders of teenage twin sisters, prison officials said, becoming the sixth inmate to be put to death in the United States in the past 12 days.
Before being executed at the state prison in Huntsville, 61-year-old Garcia White apologized to his victims’ family. He was declared dead at 6:56 pm local time.
White, a former high school football star, was convicted in 1996 of the December 1989 stabbing deaths of Annette and Burnett Edwards.
According to court and prison records, White killed the 16-year-old girls’ mother, Bonita Edwards, and then killed the two sisters after an argument in their Houston home.
White was not prosecuted for the death of Bonita Edwards or two other murders he confessed to committing, one in 1989 and the other in 1995.
White’s lawyers filed a last-minute request with the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the execution, arguing that he was intellectually disabled and therefore not eligible for the death penalty.
“I want to apologize for any wrong I have done and the pain I have caused the Edwards family,” the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a statement. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and I pray you find peace.”
Texas has executed four executions this year at the state prison in Huntsville and another inmate, Robert Roberson, 57, is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 17, despite questions about his crime.
Texas lawmaker, medical expert and best-selling novelist John Grisham is among those seeking to stop the execution of Roberson, who was convicted in the 2002 death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki.
Roberson, who is autistic, took the girl to the hospital with severe head injuries, and the child died the next day.
Roberson’s lawyers and advocates have argued that the hospital where the child died misdiagnosed shaken baby syndrome.
In a letter to Texas officials, 34 doctors said that the cause of death was actually severe pneumonia, which was aggravated by giving the wrong medication to the little girl.
Roberson’s autism, which was not diagnosed until 2018, was misinterpreted at the time as showing indifference to the child’s death and, according to his lawyers, this perception weighed heavily on his sentence.
Four executions were carried out in the United States last week and one the week before, bringing the total this year to 18.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while six others – Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee – have retained them.
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