US Executions Reach 37 This Year, Tracking Toward a Second Straight Year Above 40

• John Allen Rubio, convicted of murdering three young children in 2003, was executed in Texas, marking the 37th execution in the US this year
• In Oklahoma, James Pavatt was executed for the murder of his girlfriend’s estranged husband, becoming the 36th person executed this year

HUNTSVILLE, Texas: Two executions carried out in Texas and Oklahoma on Thursday brought the national total to 37 for the year, keeping the United States on course to surpass 40 executions for a second year in a row, a trend largely propelled by Florida.

Texas executed John Allen Rubio, 46, who had been convicted of fatally stabbing and beheading three young children in 2003. Several hours earlier, Oklahoma put James Pavatt, 73, to death for the 2001 fatal shooting of his girlfriend’s estranged husband.

The death penalty has received renewed scrutiny since the botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee in September. Last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced plans to commute hundreds of death sentences before he leaves office in January, a move experts describe as potentially the largest mass clemency in American history.

Texas execution

Rubio was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. following a lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville. The murders of the baby girl and two toddlers deeply shook Brownsville, the border city on the US-Mexico frontier, prompting authorities to later demolish the apartment building and transform the site into a park and community garden.

After a spiritual adviser prayed with him briefly, Rubio thanked friends and family for their “love and understanding” and said he was “not the same person I once was.” He credited prison staff with teaching him to find God and expressed love for his common-law wife, Angela Camacho, who is serving a life sentence for her part in the killings.

“I want to say I’m sorry to my wife’s family,” he said. “I can’t change the past, but I can tell you my life is going to be over. But that’s not going to make you happy.”

“I’m going to be with my kids in a little bit,” he added. “I’m ready to go to heaven to be with my lord and savior.”

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital took hold, Rubio took three breaths and began making what sounded like snoring. All movement then ceased, and a physician pronounced him dead 21 minutes after the injection began.

Rubio and Camacho were accused of killing 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio in the apartment they shared in Brownsville. Camacho received a life sentence after pleading guilty.

An appeals court overturned Rubio’s first capital murder conviction, ruling that Camacho’s statements had been improperly admitted as evidence. At his retrial, Rubio again pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity but was once more convicted and sentenced to death.

According to court records, Rubio was not the biological father of the two older children but treated them as his own. At various points, he claimed the children were possessed and that he was the “chosen one” meant to save the world.

Defense experts diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, a conclusion that prosecution experts disputed. The defense also argued that his childhood, marred by domestic violence, “toxic” parents, drug use and prostitution, had left him developmentally damaged.

Oklahoma execution

Pavatt received a lethal injection at an Oklahoma prison. When asked whether he had any last words, he shook his head no. As a chaplain read from the Bible, Pavatt appeared to mouth words that were inaudible.

He was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old advertising executive. Andrew was shot as he arrived to pick up his two young children before Thanksgiving. Pavatt attended the same church as the Andrew family and had been having an affair with Rob Andrew’s wife, Brenda Andrew, who was convicted at a separate trial and is the only woman currently on Oklahoma’s death row.

Weeks before the shooting, Rob Andrew told police that someone was trying to kill him after the brake lines on his car had been cut. After her husband’s death, Brenda Andrew told police that masked intruders had shot her in the arm and fatally shot him.

Pavatt and Brenda Andrew fled to Mexico with her two children after the shooting and were arrested three months later while attempting to reenter the US.

Also on Thursday, former Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of being an accessory in a 1997 murder and awaits sentencing in December. Glossip, who had come within hours of execution three times, was released on bond in May after nearly 30 years behind bars. He had been awaiting a retrial following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn his conviction.

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