Texas moves ahead with execution days after Tennessee's failed lethal injection

Texas was preparing Wednesday to carry out the first U.S. execution since Tennessee's failed attempt to put Christa Pike to death a week earlier.

Jamaal Howard was scheduled to die by lethal injection. Texas uses pentobarbital, the same drug Tennessee used in two doses that did not kill Pike on Sept. 30.

A request for more time

Howard's attorneys asked Gov. Greg Abbott for a 30-day reprieve so they could learn more about the state's supply of the drug. They argued he should not be executed within days of the same drug failing elsewhere. His final appeals were pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case

Howard was sentenced to death for the killing of Vickie Swartout, a 42-year-old convenience store clerk, during a robbery in 2000.

Pike, meanwhile, remains hospitalized in Nashville. Her lawyers say she is conscious and able to talk and Tennessee has paused its remaining executions for the year while it reviews what went wrong.