Two men were scheduled to be executed in the United States on Thursday, including a Texas father convicted of beheading three young children in his care in a 2003 crime that shocked the community of Brownsville near the US-Mexico border.
In Oklahoma, James Pavatt was also scheduled to die by lethal injection for the murder of an advertising executive, the estranged husband of a woman with whom Pavatt was having an affair.
Prosecutors said Pavatt carried out the killing alongside the woman, who remains the only female inmate on Oklahoma’s death row.
The US was on course to record more than 40 executions for a second straight year, with Florida accounting for much of the increase as the death penalty receives renewed scrutiny.
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would commute hundreds of death sentences before leaving office. Experts have described the move as potentially the largest mass clemency action in US history.
Pavatt, 73, was scheduled to be executed at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
John Allen Rubio, 46, was scheduled to be executed later in Texas at the state prison in Huntsville.
3 young children beheaded in Texas
Rubio and his girlfriend, Angela Camacho, were accused of killing Julissa Quesada, 3; John E. Rubio, 14 months; and Mary Jane Rubio, 2 months. The children were found in the squalid, windowless Brownsville apartment the couple shared.
Camacho pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence.
Rubio’s first capital murder conviction was overturned on appeal after the court ruled that statements made by Camacho had improperly been admitted as evidence during his trial.
At his second trial, Rubio again pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was convicted once more and sentenced to death.
Court records show Rubio was not the biological father of the two older children, but he raised them as though they were his own.
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Rubio at times claimed the children were possessed and said he was the “chosen one” destined to save the world. Defense experts diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, but prosecution experts rejected that conclusion.
Defense experts testified that Rubio’s violent childhood, “toxic” parents, drug use and exposure to prostitution had impaired his development.
The apartment building where the children were killed was later demolished, and the site was converted into a park and community garden.
Oklahoma advertising executive killed in garage
Pavatt was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the 2001 killing of Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old advertising executive.
Andrew was fatally shot in the garage of the Oklahoma City home he had previously shared with his wife while he was picking up their two young children before Thanksgiving.
Pavatt attended the same church as the Andrew family and was having an affair with Andrew’s wife, Brenda Andrew. The pair were tried separately and each received a death sentence.
Several weeks before the shooting, Rob Andrew told police that someone was trying to kill him after the brake lines on his car had been cut.
After her husband was killed, Brenda Andrew told police that masked intruders had shot her in the arm and fatally wounded him.
Pavatt and Brenda Andrew fled to Mexico with her two children after the shooting. They were arrested three months later while reentering the United States.
During a clemency hearing last month, Pavatt said he was “not guilty of shooting anyone.” He said he had fallen in love with Brenda Andrew and believed “everything she told me.”
“It was not until my trial that I began to see the extent to which I had been manipulated by Brenda,” Pavatt told the board. “I can see why the jury believed that we were both involved in Rob’s murder.”
Prosecutors have maintained that Pavatt and Andrew conspired to kill Rob Andrew and that, regardless of who fired the shots, both were equally responsible for the murder.
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