Texas Executes Man Who Questioned Safety of Drugs

UPDATE Oct 11, 2023 12:15 AM CDT

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, the AP reports. 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. "To the family of the victim, I sincerely apologize for all of it," Murphy said while strapped to a gurney in the Texas death chamber and after a Christian pastor, his right hand on Murphy's chest, prayed for the victim's family, Murphy's family and friends and the inmate. "I hope this helps, if possible, give you closure," Murphy said.

Oct 8, 2023 9:50 AM CDT

A federal judge on Friday denied a request to stop the execution of a Texas inmate who had alleged in a lawsuit that the drugs he is to be injected with next week were exposed to extreme heat and smoke during a recent fire, making them unsafe. The Texas Attorney General's Office says testing done after the fire on samples of the state's supplies of pentobarbital, the drug used in executions, showed they "remain potent and sterile," the AP reports. Jedidiah Murphy, 48, is scheduled to be executed Tuesday. He was condemned for the fatal October 2000 shooting of 80-year-old Bertie Lee Cunningham, of Garland, a Dallas suburb, during a carjacking.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Austin, Murphy's attorneys argue that during an Aug. 25 fire at the administration building of a prison unit in Huntsville, the execution drugs the state uses were exposed to excessively high temperatures, smoke, and water. Records from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice show the agency has stored pentobarbital at the Huntsville Unit, about 70 miles north of Houston. In response to questions about what impact the fire might have had on the execution drugs and the area where they are stored, a department spokeswoman replied, "TDCJ has viable execution drugs available."

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When pentobarbital is exposed to high temperatures, it can quickly degrade, compromising its chemical structure and impacting its potency, the lawsuit said, per the AP. "This creates substantial risks of serious, severe, and superadded harm and pain," according to the lawsuit. But in an order Friday evening, US District Judge Robert Pitman denied Murphy's request to stay his execution, saying the test results of the pentobarbital samples undermine Murphy's claims that all of TDCJ's execution drugs were damaged in the fire. "As a result, Murphy's claim that the so-called 'fire-blighted' pentobarbital is sure or very likely to cause serious illness or suffering is meritless," Pitman wrote in his 10-page order.

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