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.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m pretty sure the context that “all life is precious” applies here. That’s what pro-lifers claim. But apparently someone who may be innocent still deserves to be executed according to the people pro-lifers knowingly vote for.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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      1 year 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.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Nobody is claiming he is innocent in the article that I read.

      But you don’t think that somebody can believe that life is precious but also that some people don’t deserve to live?

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yes, people can believe all kinds of contradictory things. That doesn’t make them any less hypocritical.

            • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              You really don’t get that slogans are designed to be catchy rather than descriptive? Really? REALLY?

              Like you never got annoyed about how people (mis)interpreted “defund the police”? Or “black lives matter”?

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I’m not misinterpreting anything. If “all life is precious” that means there are no exceptions. And that’s what they say.