Oklahoma man executed in first of two US killings Thursday

James Pavatt was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. CST on Thursday after receiving a lethal injection at the Oklahoma Department of Corrections penitentiary in McAlester. The 73-year-old was serving a death sentence for the 2001 fatal shooting of Rob Andrew, the estranged husband of Pavatt’s girlfriend. Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesperson Lance West confirmed the time of death.

Pavatt was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old advertising executive, was shot in the garage of the Oklahoma City home he previously shared with his wife. At the time, Andrew was picking up their two young children before Thanksgiving. Pavatt and Brenda Andrew, who was also convicted and sentenced to death in a separate trial, attended the same church as the Andrew family.

Prosecutors argued that Pavatt and Brenda Andrew plotted to kill her husband. They stated that both defendants were equally guilty regardless of who pulled the trigger. Weeks before the shooting, Rob Andrew reported to police that someone attempted to kill him after finding his car’s brake lines cut. After the murder, Brenda Andrew told police that masked intruders shot her in the arm and killed her husband.

The couple fled to Mexico with Brenda’s two children following the shooting. Authorities arrested them three months later when they reentered the United States. At a clemency hearing last month, Pavatt told the board he was not guilty of shooting anyone. He said he believed everything Brenda Andrew told him and that he only realized the extent of her manipulation during his trial.

A second execution is scheduled for later Thursday in Texas. John Allen Rubio, 46, is set to die by lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville. Rubio was convicted of beheading three young children he was raising in a 2003 killing in Brownsville. The victims were 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio, and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio.

Rubio and his girlfriend, Angela Camacho, lived in a windowless apartment in Brownsville. Camacho pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence. An appeals court overturned Rubio’s first conviction because statements by Camacho were wrongly admitted as evidence. He was convicted again in a second trial where he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Defense experts diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia and cited a violent childhood, while prosecutors rejected that determination.

The United States is on track to surpass 40 executions for the second consecutive year. Florida is driving this pace as the death penalty gains renewed attention. Last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced he would commute hundreds of death sentences before leaving office. Experts described the move as the largest mass clemency in American history.