AUSTIN, Texas — Texas is approaching its 600th execution since 1982 as advocates and legal experts continue raising concerns about the scheduled execution of Edward Busby, whose attorneys and supporters argue he is intellectually disabled and therefore constitutionally ineligible for the death penalty.
The execution of Edward Busby is scheduled to take place Thursday, May 14, despite what the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, or TCADP, described as “agreement from experts that he has intellectual disability and should be exempt from the death penalty.”
Providing background on the case, the TCADP explained that in 2005, Busby, a Black man, was sentenced to death “for the kidnapping and murder of Laura Lee Crane.” The organization added that his conviction occurred in Tarrant County, “which historically and currently is among the top sentencing counties in Texas and where there is a troubling pattern of racial bias in the application of capital punishment.”
In recent years, Busby has faced multiple execution dates, the most recent of which led the “Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) [to grant] him a stay in 2021 to allow review of his intellectual disability claim,” according to the TCADP.
The review included “two independent experts — one retained by the defense and one by the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office — [who] reached the same conclusion: he meets the full diagnostic criteria for intellectual disability under current clinical standards.” Upon receiving this information, the TCADP noted that “the State ultimately agreed that Mr. Busby is ineligible for the death penalty.”
Emphasizing the issue, the TCADP recounted that, regardless of those findings, “the trial court inexplicably rejected these findings based on the judge’s own non-expert opinion, dismissing the trained psychologists’ conclusions as ‘merely informative’ and substituting its own judgment for that of trained medical professionals.” The organization added that the CCA “then adopted this reasoning, disregarding both expert consensus and the State’s own prior position.”
According to the TCADP, Busby currently has “appeals pending in federal court, as well as an application for clemency with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Abbott,” despite his execution being scheduled for May 14.
Although Texas has “increasingly abandoned the death penalty in recent years … Mr. Busby was convicted in Tarrant County, where prosecutors continue to seek the ultimate punishment at an alarming rate that disproportionately targets people of color.” The TCADP stated that “his case exemplifies everything that is wrong with the Texas death penalty.”
Last week, on Friday, May 8, a “three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit temporarily stayed the execution of Mr. Busby, pending further order of the court,” according to the TCADP. The organization added that “at this time, it is unclear if the State will appeal.”
Kristin Houlé Cuellar, executive director of the TCADP, stated that “[they] welcome this action by the Fifth Circuit and urge the State to abandon its plans to execute Mr. Busby in light of the constitutional issues at stake.”
The TCADP emphasized that if the stay does not remain in place, and Gov. Greg Abbott “does not stop this unconstitutional execution, Mr. Busby will become the 600th person put to death by the State of Texas in the modern death penalty era.” The organization noted that the first was Charlie Brooks, “a Black man also convicted in Tarrant County, executed on December 7, 1982.”
The TCADP noted that “seventy-one percent of these 600 executions occurred between 1996 and 2015; in the last decade, the State has put 68 people to death. Both executions and death sentences in Texas have remained at record low levels for the past seven years.”
Cuellar said that “on the eve of this somber milestone, we grieve for the 599 men and women whose lives were ended by the State of Texas and the harm suffered by all Texans impacted by violence.”
She further stated that “we must also acknowledge the tremendous shifts in the Texas death penalty landscape in recent years, which strongly indicate that most of the individuals executed by Texas over the last 44 years would not be sentenced to death if they were charged and tried today.”
Burke Butler, co-executive director of Texas Defender Services, remarked that “Texas has long held the position as the capital of capital punishment … yet recent trends reveal that Texans are increasingly abandoning the death penalty as a path to justice. Only a handful of counties continue to pursue new death sentences.”
Butler continued, stating that “where the death penalty is still used in Texas, it is arbitrary and racially biased, and it continues to ensnare innocent and vulnerable people, all at a tremendous expense to taxpayers.”
Nan Tolson, director of Texas Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, said that “with 18 exonerations from Texas death row, at least 8 wrongful executions, millions of wasted taxpayer dollars, and countless grieving families torn apart, it is apparent that the death penalty is both a moral and systemic failure.”
Tolson added that “more and more Texans, especially conservatives, are standing up against this system of death.”
Cuellar emphasized that the “case of Edward Busby exemplifies the arbitrariness that permeates the Texas death penalty system. Since 2017, 19 people in Texas have been removed from death row after courts recognized they are intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution.”
Finalizing her point, Cuellar stated that “these decisions reflect a necessary course correction toward compliance with constitutional standards. Yet Mr. Busby has been denied this same recognition and remains at risk of execution, even though the experts in his case agree he meets the criteria for intellectual disability.”
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