The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a stay of execution for Texas death row inmate Edward Busby on Thursday, clearing the way for his execution tonight amid concerns of his ineligibility due to intellectual disability.
The court’s brief order comes almost a week after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted Busby’s execution after defense lawyers argued that Busby is intellectually disabled, making him ineligible for capital punishment.
The court’s three liberal justices opposed the order, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson submitting a two-page dissenting opinion admonishing the court for being “unable to tolerate even a brief delay.”
“In capital cases, we rarely intervene to preserve life,” Jackson wrote in the dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “I cannot understand the Court’s rush to extinguish it, much less in the circumstances of this case.”
Justice Elena Kagan also would have upheld the stay of execution, the order said.
Busby was sentenced to death in 2005 in the deadly robbery and kidnapping of 78-year-old Laura Crane, suffocating her by wrapping her face with tape. His execution had been halted twice before: in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, and again in 2021 by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to review a separate intellectual disability claim.
Busby’s execution would be Texas’ 600th since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976. Texas accounts for roughly 36% of the country’s executions in the time since, more than the next four states combined, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
