An Oklahoma man was executed on Thursday for the fatal shooting of his girlfriend’s estranged husband, who had arrived to collect his two young children ahead of Thanksgiving. This marked the first of two executions scheduled in the United States that day.
James Pavatt, 73, was administered a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in McAlester. He showed no signs of respiratory distress during the procedure and was declared unconscious approximately six minutes before being pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. CST.
In Texas, John Allen Rubio was scheduled to be executed later that same evening. The 46-year-old had been convicted of fatally stabbing and decapitating three young children in 2003 in Brownsville, a city situated on the Texas-Mexico border.
While capital punishment has drawn renewed scrutiny following the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee in September, the United States remains on course to surpass 40 executions for a second consecutive year , a pace largely driven by the state of Florida.
The previous week, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced his intention to commute hundreds of death sentences before leaving office, a move that legal experts suggest would constitute the largest mass clemency action in American history.
On Thursday, former Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip entered a guilty plea to a lesser charge of being an accessory to a 1997 murder and is awaiting sentencing in December. Glossip, who had come within hours of execution on three separate occasions, was released on bond in May after spending nearly 30 years incarcerated. The United States Supreme Court had previously overturned his conviction, and he had been awaiting a retrial.
Oklahoma advertising executive killed in garage
When Pavatt was asked whether he had any final words, he responded by shaking his head. As a chaplain read aloud from the Bible, Pavatt appeared to mouth certain words, though they were inaudible to those present.
Pavatt was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the 2001 death of Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old advertising executive. Pavatt had attended the same church as the Andrew family and had been engaged in an extramarital affair with Rob Andrew’s wife, Brenda Andrew. She was tried separately, convicted, and currently remains the only woman on death row in Oklahoma.
In the weeks preceding the shooting, Rob Andrew had reported to police that someone appeared to be attempting to kill him after the brake lines on his vehicle were severed. Following her husband’s death, Brenda Andrew told authorities that masked intruders had shot her in the arm and fatally shot her husband.
Following the shooting, Pavatt and Brenda Andrew fled to Mexico with her two children and were apprehended three months later while attempting to re-enter the United States.
At a clemency hearing the previous month, Pavatt maintained that he was “not guilty of shooting anyone,” stating that he had fallen in love with Brenda Andrew and had believed “everything she told me.”
“It was not until my trial that I began to see the extent to which I had been manipulated by Brenda,” Pavatt told the board. “I can see why the jury believed that we were both involved in Rob’s murder.”
Prosecutors maintained that Pavatt and Brenda Andrew had conspired to murder her husband and that regardless of who fired the fatal shots, both individuals bore equal culpability.
No members of Rob Andrew’s family or Pavatt’s family were present to witness the execution, though his daughter and her husband had visited him the evening prior, according to a prison spokesperson.
3 young children beheaded in Texas
Rubio and his girlfriend, Angela Camacho, were charged in connection with the killings of 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio, and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio in the dilapidated, windowless apartment they occupied in Brownsville, on the Texas-Mexico border.
Camacho entered a guilty plea and is currently serving a life sentence.
Rubio’s initial capital murder conviction was overturned by an appeals court, which determined that statements made by Camacho had been improperly admitted as evidence during his trial. Rubio once again entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity at his second trial, but was convicted once more and sentenced to death.
According to court records, Rubio was not the biological father of the two older children, though he treated them as his own.
At various points throughout the proceedings, Rubio claimed that the children had been possessed and that he was the “chosen one,” destined to save the world. Defense experts diagnosed Rubio with paranoid schizophrenia, a conclusion that was disputed by prosecution experts.
Defense witnesses testified that Rubio’s childhood , characterized by domestic violence, “toxic” parental figures, drug use, and exposure to prostitution , had caused significant developmental harm.
The apartment building in which the children were killed was subsequently demolished, and the land was transformed into a park and community garden.
Rubio was scheduled to be executed Thursday evening at the state prison in Huntsville. Texas prison spokeswoman Amanda Hernandez described him as conversational and visibly at ease upon his arrival at the Huntsville Unit, where executions are carried out. She noted that he had slept during the van journey from the prison housing death row, located approximately 45 miles to the east.
