HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) – Governor Greg Abbott has agreed to spare a convicted killer from execution.
Thomas “Bart” Whitaker was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Thursday night.
Earlier in the day, Texas prison officials described Whitaker as nearly stoic after his move from death row to a holding cell steps from the death chamber.
Whitaker was taken at midday about 45 miles (70 kilometers) from the prison that houses the state’s male death row to the Huntsville Unit, where executions take place.
Asked if he planned to make a final statement if the execution is carried out, he told officials he would but had no plans to “do anything self-aggrandizing.”
Whitaker was sentenced to death for masterminding the fatal shootings of his mother and brother at their suburban Houston home in 2003 in a plot to collect inheritance.
He spent the morning meeting with relatives, including his father, who has pushed to have his son’s life spared even though he was wounded in the shootings.
The Texas parole board had recommended that Abbott commute Whitaker’s death sentence.
It’s the first time in more than a decade that a Texas governor halted an imminent execution.
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