A Texas death row inmate was given one final opportunity to speak Wednesday evening, moments before the state executed him for the murders of three people during a botched 2005 robbery.
LeJames Norman, 40, had nothing to say.
When the warden asked whether he wanted to make a final statement, Norman simply shook his head before he was put to death by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
Norman was sentenced to death for fatally shooting Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, inside the Edna home they shared, about 100 miles southwest of Houston.
According to court records, Norman and Ker’Sean Ramey believed there was cocaine inside the home and went there intending to steal it. They never found any drugs.
Ramey was also convicted in the killings and sentenced to death. His execution is scheduled for next week.
Norman was arrested about five months after the murders while trying to cross back into the United States from Mexico.
He later pleaded guilty to capital murder, leaving a jury to decide whether he would be sentenced to death. The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request from Norman’s attorneys Wednesday to stop the execution.
In his final moments, Norman lay on a thin mattress atop a steel table and looked toward a window. His sister, two of his children and a friend were there watching him.
After receiving a lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital, Norman took a couple of deep breaths, appeared to yawn and made several snoring sounds. He then stopped moving.
A physician examined him about 30 minutes later, and Norman was pronounced dead at 6:44 p.m.
No relatives or friends of the three people he killed witnessed the execution.
Norman was the fifth inmate executed in Texas this year.
Another execution scheduled for Wednesday was halted in Georgia, where Stacey Humphreys, a man convicted of killing two real estate agents, had been set to die. A judge stopped the execution in a late-night decision Tuesday after Humphreys’ lawyers requested a delay over a new state law that gives victims of childhood abuse the opportunity to have their sentences reduced.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
