A Texas killer who murdered four, including a woman who was nine-months pregnant, used his last words to condemn his execution as an injustice.
Arthur Brown Jr., 52, received a lethal injection Thursday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
‘What is happening here tonight isn’t justice,’ he said. ‘It’s the murder of another innocent man.’
Brown was given the death penalty over three decades ago for the 1992 slayings of four people in a fatal drug robbery-gone-wrong.
Arthur Brown Jr., pictured, used his last words to condemn his execution as an injustice, branding himself an ‘innocent man’
Pictured from left to right: The killer was convicted for the brutal murders of Jessica Quinones, 19, Jose Tovar, 32, Frank Farias, 17, and Audrey Brown, 21
Authorities say Brown was a member of a drug ring that transported narcotics from Texas to Alabama.
While visiting the home of a married couple who supplied drugs to the gang, Brown and his accomplices gunned down four people as they raided the property.
After tying up the residents, they shot dead Jose Tovar, 32, his wife’s son Frank Farias, 17, neighbor Audrey Brown, 21, and Jessica Quinones, 19, who was nine-months pregnant at the time.
Jose Tovar’s wife Rachel and another occupant were also shot in the horror incident, but survived.
‘I don’t see how anybody could have just killed a pregnant woman and then made her suffer so much,’ said Quinones’ older sister Maricella before the execution.
‘It’s just beyond words.’
Brown’s attorneys attempted a last-minute delay on his execution, arguing that he should be exempt from the death penalty as he is intellectually disabled, a claim disputed by prosecutors.
‘Mr. Brown’s intellectual limitations were known to his friends and family,’ the killer’s attorneys wrote in their petition.
‘Individuals that knew Mr. Brown over the course of his life have described him consistently as “slow”‘.
The US Supreme Court, which has previously ruled that intellectually disabled individuals cannot be put to death, declined the appeal Thursday.
He reportedly took two deep breaths as a lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital was injected into his system, before he quickly began snoring.
Brown was pronounced dead at 6:37pm, 17 minutes after he was administered the drug.
Brown was executed Thursday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, pictured
The killer was part of a lawsuit alleging the Texas prison system is using expired execution drugs in its lethal injections. Pictured: The execution chamber at the Huntsville penitentiary
He was convicted for the 1992 slayings of four people in a fatal drug robbery
Brown was the second death row inmate executed this week in Texas, just days after Gary Green, 51, pictured, received a lethal injection for double murder in 2009
The inmate’s attorneys had also previously launched several other unsuccessful appeals in lower courts, including a claim that his conviction was tainted by a racist juror.
Two days before he was given the lethal injection, a Houston judge denied a request from for DNA testing that Brown’s attorneys claim would exonerate him in the killings.
However, the last-minute appeals were slammed as merely a delay tactic to extend his life by Josh Reiss, who heads the Post-Conviction Writs Division with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Houston.
‘It was an absolutely brutal mass murder,’ he said. ‘These families deserve justice.’
Reiss argued that school records, which were shown at Brown’s trial, reveal that the convicted killer was only believed to be intellectually disabled in the third grade, but that was no longer the case by the time he reached the ninth grade.
In the years before his execution, Brown had long argued that another gang member had committed the killings.
But Reiss also claims that the other alleged killer was found to not have been in Houston at the time of the slayings.
One of Brown’s accomplices, Marion Dudley, was executed in 2006 for the shootings, while a third is serving a life sentence in prison.
Brown was one of six Texas death row inmates who joined a lawsuit against the state’s prison system, alleging it uses expired execution drugs in lethal injections.
The suit alleges that authorities are extending the use-by-dates of its lethal injection drugs due to a lack of pharmacies willing to produce them.
Prison officials deny the lawsuits’ claims that the expired drugs make their execution more painful, and say the state’s supply of drugs is safe.
Five of the inmates involved in the lawsuit have since been executed, as the litigation moves through the courts.
Brown was the fifth inmate executed in Texas this year, and the ninth in the US.
His Thursday lethal injection was also the second in Texas this week, following the death of murderer Gary Green, who was also part of the lawsuit.
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