The American state of Texas executed an African-American man, who was sentenced to the end of the sentences for the murder of an 83-year-old woman, on Wednesday, despite the fact that he had asked the state governor Greg Abbott to pardon him.
Quintin Jones was given a lethal injection and his death was announced at 18:40 yesterday afternoon (02:40 in the early hours of Thursday, Greek time). He is the first prisoner to be executed in Texas and in the US this year.
In a four-minute video that aired on the New York Times website last week, Jones addressed Republican Abbott directly, asking him to commute his sentence to life in prison. “I killed someone more than 20 years ago,” the 41-year-old African-American admitted in the video, who in 1991 killed his grandmother’s 83-year-old sister with a baseball bat and then took $ 30 to buy drugs. But I am no longer the same, I became a human being in the wing of the future, you add. Governor, if you can find it in your heart to give me grace, I could continue to live to improve. Watch the video
At the same time, his lawyers, including his victim’s daughter and actress Sarah Paulson, posted a request on the Internet, which was also addressed to the governor of Texas, which until yesterday morning had collected more than 160,000 signatures.
Abbott has only pardoned one futurist in the six years he owes as governor of Texas. Jones’ lawyers also appealed to the US Supreme Court in an attempt to postpone his execution. They argued, among other things, that their client was suffering from “mental deprivation” and therefore could not be executed.
This was the first execution in the United States since US President Joe Biden was sworn in in January as a Democrat opposed to the death penalty. After all, even the most conservative states, such as Texas, have made very few executions since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The government of former US President Donald Trump had resumed federal executions in July 2020 and had a record number (13) of executions by lethal injection.
Πηγή: iefimerida.gr – https://www.iefimerida.gr/kosmos/texas-ektelestike-afroamerikanos
