Death penalty opponents are waiting to see if the state will proceed with what they say would be an unconstitutional execution. Texas officials plan to put Edward Busby to death today, May 14, despite the agreement of at least two experts that he is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty.
Last week, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Texas to halt Busby’s execution “pending further order,” ruling that an upcoming Alabama case could cause the U.S. Supreme Court to change how intellectual disability is determined, by calculating it based on multiple IQ tests. “[W]e must be certain that we apply the proper constitutional rule as to whether and how to determine intellectual disability before states may execute defendants for capital crimes,” Judge Stephen Higginson wrote in the court’s ruling, “especially when it is a rule that the Supreme Court imminently will clarify.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the Supreme Court on Monday to overturn the 5th Circuit’s ruling, arguing that Busby’s intellectual disability claim is meritless and that his attorneys filed it improperly.
Busby was sentenced to death in 2005 for the kidnapping and murder of Laura Crane in Tarrant County. He has faced multiple executions in recent years that were called off at the last minute. In 2021, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that his intellectual disability claims should be examined in a hearing held by his trial court. Two experts – one hired by his defense attorneys and one by the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office – agreed that he met the standards for intellectual disability as it is currently understood.
Busby’s trial court rejected the conclusions, however, dismissing them as “merely informative” and substituting its own judgment that Busby was eligible for death. The TCCA then adopted the trial court’s reasoning, disregarding the opinion of the experts, including the one from the Tarrant County D.A.’s Office.
Kristin Houlé Cuellar, the leader of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said Busby’s case demonstrates the arbitrariness that permeates the Texas death penalty system. “Since 2017, 19 people in Texas have been removed from death row after courts recognized they are intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution,” Cuellar said. “These decisions reflect a necessary course correction toward compliance with constitutional standards. Yet Mr. Busby has been denied this same recognition and remains at risk of execution, even though the experts in his case agree he meets the criteria for intellectual disability.”
If Busby is executed, he will be the 600th person put to death by the state of Texas since 1982.
This article appears in May 15 • 2026.
