Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
SCHEDULED EXECUTIONS
For the third time in recent weeks, the State of Texas is scheduled to execute a Black man who was under the age of 21 at the time of the crime. Jamaal Howard faces execution on October 7, 2026, for killing clerk Vickie Swartout while robbing a gas station in 2000 in Silsbee, Texas (Hardin County). He was 20 at the time and has spent more than half of his life on death row.
Howard has filed a writ of habeas corpus with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in which he argues that his death sentence violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments because he is an intellectually disabled person.
He also has asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Greg Abbott to commute his death sentence based on these key issues:
- Evidence of his intellectual disability
- His longstanding severe mental illness, which started to manifest when he was a teenager and included auditory hallucinations at the time of the crime
Neither of these impairments excuse his actions, but they do substantially diminish his culpability and call into question the appropriateness of his death sentence.
WHO WE ARE
The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) is the only statewide grassroots advocacy organization dedicated solely to ending the death penalty in Texas. Together with local, state, and national partners, TCADP is working to reduce use of the death penalty in Texas and, ultimately, end this arbitrary, irreversible, and unfair punishment.
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TEXAS DEATH PENALTY FACTS
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