The 53-year-old American, sentenced to death for murder and who spent more than 30 years on death row, is to be executed on Thursday in Texas, in the south of the United States, AFP reports.

An execution chamber with lethal injection in TexasPhoto: Texas Department of Criminal Justice via Bestimage / Bestimage / Profimedia

Brent Brewer’s latest appeals were denied Tuesday by the Texas Court of Appeals.

His lawyers argued that the death penalty was imposed based on the testimony of a psychiatric expert who concluded that he was dangerous, without a personal examination and despite his “exemplary” behavior in prison, and that one of the jurors who wanted to vote for life sentence was misled by the court’s instructions.

He was originally sentenced to death in 1991 for the slaying last year of Robert Laminac, 66, who picked up Brent Brewer and his girlfriend, Christy Lynn Nystrom, in his car and then stabbed him in the back, the pair fleeing the scene with the wallet victim, in which there was 140 dollars.

The 1991 death sentence was overturned in 2007 by the US Supreme Court, but was upheld in a 2009 retrial, based in part on expert psychiatric testimony that Texas courts later found unreliable in determining the “future dangerousness” of a convicted felon.

Brent Brewer expressed remorse for his actions in a video message, explaining that he only realized the gravity of his actions after his arrest.

In its latest monthly survey on the fairness of the death penalty, the Gallup Institute indicates that a majority of Americans (50% versus 47% opposed in October) believe it is unfairly used in the United States, for the first time since the report was published. 2000 survey.

According to the same source, a majority (53% in 2023) still favor the death penalty.

Brent Brewer is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection shortly after 6:00 p.m. local time (midnight GMT).

In 2023, there have already been twenty executions in the United States, including six in Texas, all by lethal injection.

But the southern state of Alabama announced its intention to execute convict Kenneth Smith in January 2024 by nitrogen inhalation, the first. In this type of execution, death occurs as a result of hypoxia (depletion of oxygen).