{"id":349318,"date":"2026-09-17T14:56:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349318\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T14:56:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:56:18","slug":"texas-man-lejames-norman-executes-for-killing-3-during-2005-home-robbery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349318\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas man LeJames Norman executes for killing 3 during 2005 home robbery"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man has been put to death<\/a> for the 2005 fatal shooting of three people during an attempted robbery at his neighbor\u2019s home in rural Texas, the state\u2019s fifth execution this year.<\/p>\n

In Georgia, the execution of a man who killed two real estate agents had also been scheduled for Wednesday but was halted by a judge\u2019s late-night decision a day before he was scheduled to die.<\/p>\n

LeJames Norman, 40, was put to death by lethal injection Wednesday at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.<\/p>\n

LeJames Norman, 40, was put to death by lethal injection Wednesday at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP<\/p>\n

He\u2019d been sentenced to death in the fatal shootings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, inside the home they shared in Edna, located about 100 miles southwest of Houston.<\/p>\n

Ker\u2019Sean Ramey was also convicted in the shootings and sentenced to death. His execution is set for next week.<\/p>\n

Court records indicated Norman and Ramey believed there was cocaine in the house and hoped to steal it, but they never found any drugs.<\/p>\n

Norman was arrested about five months after the killings while trying to cross back into the US from Mexico.<\/p>\n

Norman pleaded guilty to capital murder, leaving a jury to decide his punishment.<\/p>\n

The US Supreme Court denied a request on Wednesday from Norman\u2019s attorneys to stop his execution.<\/p>\n

Tiffani Peacock was one of the three victims killed in Norman\u2019s 2005 triple murder. Tabatha Munnerlyn Hastings<\/p>\n

No last words before execution<\/p>\n

Asked by the warden if he wanted to make a final statement, Norman shook his head.<\/p>\n

He was laying on a thin mattress atop a steel table, his head on a white pillow.<\/p>\n

He nodded toward a window through which a sister, two of his children and a friend watched and made eye contact as one of them danced.<\/p>\n

The death chamber gurney is seen at the Huntsville prison in Texas, where Norman was executed on Sept. 16, 2026. Corbis via Getty Images<\/p>\n

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, he took a couple of deep breaths, appeared to yawn and made snoring sounds \u2014 six of them. All movement then stopped.<\/p>\n

Thirty minutes later, after a physician examined him, he was pronounced dead at 6:44 p.m. and covered with a white sheet. Only his right hand and lower forearm, covered with an elastic bandage, were visible.<\/p>\n

No relatives or friends of the three murder victims in his case witnessed Norman\u2019s punishment.<\/p>\n

Judge halts Georgia execution<\/p>\n

Stacey Humphreys, 53, was convicted of malice murder<\/a> and other crimes in the 2003 killings of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown in an Atlanta suburb.<\/p>\n

He too had been scheduled to die by an injection of the same drug at 7 p.m. EDT at the state prison near Jackson.<\/p>\n

However, a judge halted Humphreys\u2019 execution<\/a> late Tuesday after his lawyers filed a petition seeking a resentencing under a new state law that allows victims of abuse to have their sentences reconsidered and reduced, if they can tie their crimes to abuse they suffered.<\/p>\n

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The state appealed that ruling, asking the Georgia Supreme Court to find that Humphreys is not entitled to have his sentence reconsidered under the new law.<\/p>\n

But the high court declined to hear that appeal before the scheduled execution time and left the lower court\u2019s stay in place.<\/p>\n

Georgia\u2019s high court said it would consider the questions raised about the new law in the state\u2019s appeal \u201cin the ordinary course of business and according to a forthcoming scheduling order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Killings at a model home and allegations of a biased juror<\/p>\n

The two women who Humphreys killed<\/a> were working as real estate agents for a new subdivision in the Atlanta suburb of Powder Springs.<\/p>\n

He entered the sales office in a model home around midday on Nov. 3, 2003, and forced them to strip naked and give him their bank PINs before fatally shooting them, according to evidence presented at trial.<\/p>\n

Humphreys withdrew more than $3,000 from the women\u2019s bank accounts,<\/a> according to court filings.<\/p>\n

This undated photo released by the Georgia Department of Corrections on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, shows Stacey Humphreys. Georgia Department of Corrections via AP<\/p>\n

He told police after his arrest that he had recently taken out some high-interest payday loans and needed money for a payment on his truck.<\/p>\n

Witnesses told police they saw a man fitting Humphreys\u2019 description at the sales office and a vehicle in the parking lot that matched his black Dodge Durango.<\/p>\n

Police zeroed in on Humphreys and tried to question him at his Dunwoody home days later. He fled and was arrested in Wisconsin after leading police on a high-speed chase.<\/p>\n

In addition to the petition for a reduced sentence, Humphreys\u2019 lawyers have argued that he should be resentenced because his death sentence was tainted by a biased juror who lied during jury selection and bullied other jurors into voting for a death sentence.<\/p>\n

Courts have repeatedly rejected those arguments for procedural reasons, though US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor,<\/a> joined by the other two liberal justices, argued last year that the issue should be further explored rather than leaving it \u201ccaught in a web of procedural barriers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, Humphreys\u2019 lawyers have argued that it was not fair that his clemency application was heard by only four members of the five-person State Board of Pardons and Paroles.<\/p>\n

A judge had ordered one member of the board to recuse herself, agreeing with Humphreys\u2019 legal team that there was a conflict of interest because she previously worked as a victim advocate with the Cobb County district attorney\u2019s office and had worked with the victims in his case.<\/p>\n

The parole board on Tuesday denied clemency for Humphreys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been put to death for the 2005 fatal shooting of three people during an attempted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[23519,23520,2440,238,9,11,10,49,51,50,1777,58],"class_list":["post-349318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-death-penalty","tag-death-row","tag-executions","tag-murders","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-texas","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}