Texas executes man convicted of killing 3 during 2005 home robbery, state’s fifth of the year
A man has been put to death for the 2005 fatal shooting of three people during an attempted robbery at his neighbor’s home in rural Texas, the state’s fifth execution this year.
In Georgia, the execution of a man who killed two real estate agents had also been scheduled for Wednesday but was halted by a judge’s late-night decision a day before he was scheduled to die.
LeJames Norman, 40, was put to death by lethal injection Wednesday at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
He’d been sentenced to death in the fatal shootings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, inside the home they shared in Edna, located about 100 miles southwest of Houston.
Ker’Sean Ramey was also convicted in the shootings and sentenced to death. His execution is set for next week.
Court records indicated Norman and Ramey believed there was cocaine in the house and hoped to steal it, but they never found any drugs.
Norman was arrested about five months after the killings while trying to cross back into the US from Mexico.
Norman pleaded guilty to capital murder, leaving a jury to decide his punishment.
The US Supreme Court denied a request on Wednesday from Norman’s attorneys to stop his execution.
No last words before execution
Asked by the warden if he wanted to make a final statement, Norman shook his head.
He was laying on a thin mattress atop a steel table, his head on a white pillow.
He nodded toward a window through which a sister, two of his children and a friend watched and made eye contact as one of them danced.
As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, he took a couple of deep breaths, appeared to yawn and made snoring sounds — six of them. All movement then stopped.
Thirty minutes later, after a physician examined him, he was pronounced dead at 6:44 p.m. and covered with a white sheet. Only his right hand and lower forearm, covered with an elastic bandage, were visible.
No relatives or friends of the three murder victims in his case witnessed Norman’s punishment.
Judge halts Georgia execution
Stacey Humphreys, 53, was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in the 2003 killings of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown in an Atlanta suburb.
He too had been scheduled to die by an injection of the same drug at 7 p.m. EDT at the state prison near Jackson.
However, a judge halted Humphreys’ execution late Tuesday after his lawyers filed a petition seeking a resentencing under a new state law that allows victims of abuse to have their sentences reconsidered and reduced, if they can tie their crimes to abuse they suffered.
