The execution was carried out after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected claims by Brewer's attorneys that prosecutors at a 2009 resentencing trial had relied on false and discredited expert testimony.

A Texas man who said his death sentence was based on false and unscientific expert testimony was executed Thursday evening for killing a man during a robbery decades ago.

Brent Ray Brewer, 53, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the April 1990 death of Robert Laminack. The inmate was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time, 15 minutes after the chemicals began flowing.

Prosecutors had said Laminack, 66, gave Brewer and his girlfriend a ride to a Salvation Army location in Amarillo when he was stabbed in the neck and robbed of $140.

Brewer’s execution came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in over the inmate’s claims that prosecutors had relied on false and discredited expert testimony at his 2009 resentencing trial.

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
    112·
    8 months ago

    Brewer has long expressed remorse for the killing and a desire to apologize to Laminack’s family.

    “I will never be able to repay or replace the hurt (and) worry (and) pain I caused you. I come to you in true humility and honest heart and ask for your forgiveness,” Brewer wrote in a letter to Laminack’s family that was included in his clemency application to the parole board.

    He did not dispute the guilty verdict. He is guilty. He admitted guilt. He has not claimed innocence. Quite the contrary, he explicitly claimed to have committed the murder.

    He disputed the expert testimony of a witness at his sentencing hearing who claimed he would forever remain a danger.