{"id":294273,"date":"2026-05-15T09:11:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T09:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/294273\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T09:11:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T09:11:18","slug":"supreme-court-allows-texas-to-execute-edward-busby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/294273\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court allows Texas to execute Edward Busby"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/about\/ethics\/#ai-policy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AI policy<\/a>, and give us <a href=\"https:\/\/airtable.com\/appFeleeKVUN0Iytx\/pagPG40gbkU0EfjIr\/form\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The court\u2019s brief <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/25pdf\/25a1235_fd9g.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">order<\/a> comes almost a week after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2026\/05\/11\/texas-execution-edward-busby-appeal\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">halted <\/a>Busby\u2019s execution after defense lawyers argued that Busby is intellectually disabled, making him ineligible for capital punishment.<\/p>\n<p>The court\u2019s three liberal justices opposed the order, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson submitting a two-page dissenting opinion admonishing the court for being \u201cunable to tolerate even a brief delay.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn capital cases, we rarely intervene to preserve life,\u201d Jackson wrote in the dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. \u201cI cannot understand the Court\u2019s rush to extinguish it, much less in the circumstances of this case.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Justice Elena Kagan also would have upheld the stay of execution, the order said.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Busby\u2019s execution would be Texas\u2019 600th since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976. Texas accounts for roughly 36% of the country\u2019s executions in the time since, more than the next four states combined, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/author\/ayden-runnels\/\" rel=\"author nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Avatar photo\" src=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/cropped-Ayden-Runnels-2025-NP-Update-120x120.jpg\"  class=\"avatar avatar-120 photo\" height=\"120\" width=\"120\"\/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAyden Runnels is the afternoon\/evening reporter. Previously, they were a breaking news reporter for the Las Vegas Sun. A graduate of the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas, Ayden&#8230;\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a class=\"author-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/author\/ayden-runnels\/\" rel=\"author nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Ayden Runnels\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2315,27,2317,29,28,14888,6473],"class_list":["post-294273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-death-penalty","tag-texas","tag-texas-court-of-criminal-appeals","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-u-s-supreme-court","tag-well-a-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}