Edward Busby’s Texas execution to proceed Thursday after SCOTUS lifts stay
Edward Lee Busby Jr. Credit: Texas Department of Criminal Justice
FORT WORTH, Texas - A Texas man convicted of murder is expected to be executed Thursday night after the Supreme Court of the United States reversed a decision preventing his death.
Edward Busby was found guilty of murdering a professor in 2005, and a federal appeals court temporarily stopped his execution Friday due to an intellectual disability.
Busby execution to proceed
The latest:
SCOTUS issued their decision Thursday afternoon to vacate the stay issued by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the previous week.
In the decision, written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court said it "finds itself unable to tolerate even a brief delay." Jackson was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor in dissenting.
Edward Busby’s execution temporarily halted over intellectual disability claims
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay for Edward Busby, a Tarrant County man convicted of kidnapping and murdering a retired TCU professor in 2004.
What they're saying:
"Lifting the Fifth Circuit’s stay, the Court grants emergency relief to ensure that Texas’s current inclination (that it must execute Busby tonight) wins out over its former one (that it could not execute Busby at all)," Jackson wrote in the decision. "In capital cases, we rarely intervene to preserve life. I cannot understand the Court’s rush to extinguish it, much less in the circumstances of this case. With respect, I dissent."
Read the full document below:
Busby execution stayed
The backstory:
Busby’s attorneys filed an appeal, claiming they were denied funding to test him for an intellectual disability. The lawyers also claimed two new tests prove Busby has a disability.
Under the 8th Amendment, defendants determined to be intellectually disabled are ineligible for execution.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted Busby a temporary stay, pending the outcome of a Supreme Court ruling in a separate case.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has also asked the Supreme Court to vacate the stay, arguing Busby’s claims are meritless.
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Retired TCU Professor Murdered
Dig deeper:
Busby was convicted in 2005 of killing Laura Lee Crane, a 77-year-old retired Texas Christian University professor.
According to police, Busby abducted Crane from a Fort Worth grocery store parking lot in January 2004. Investigators believe she was a random target and that robbery was the motive.
During the trial in 2005, prosecutors said Busby and his companion used Crane's credit cards and a blank check to rob her of more than $775 before driving Crane's car to Oklahoma with her in the trunk.
Crane's body was found at the bottom of an embankment off Interstate 35 near Davis, Oklahoma. Crane's mouth was covered with duct tape, and she died from asphyxiation, according to an autopsy report.
Authorities were led to the body after Busby confessed, Fort Worth police have said.
Busby's companion, Kathleen "Kitty" Latimer, was sentenced to life in prison in February 2006. She is now 61 years old and is currently serving her sentence in a Texas prison. She could be eligible for parole in 2034.
The Source: Information in this article comes from the Supreme Court of the United States.