Texas executed Arthur Brown, Jr., an inmate convicted of the drug-related killings of four people more than 30 years ago, including a woman who was 9-months pregnant. Brown 52, insisted he was innocent before receiving a lethal injection Thursday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the June 1992 slayings in a Houston home during a drug robbery, reports the Associated Press. Brown was part of a ring that shuttled drugs from Texas to Alabama and had bought drugs from Jose Tovar and his wife Rachel Tovar. Killed in the robbery were Jose Tovar, 32; his wife’s 17-year-old son, Frank Farias; 19-year-old Jessica Quiñones, the pregnant girlfriend of another son of Rachel Tovar; and Audrey Brown, 21.
“I don’t see how anybody could have just killed a pregnant woman and then made her suffer so much. It’s just beyond words,” Quiñones’ older sister, Maricella, said before the execution. Brown was the fifth inmate put to death in Texas this year and the ninth in the U.S. His execution was the second in Texas this week. Another inmate, Gary Green, was executed Tuesday for killing his estranged wife and her young daughter. Brown said, "What is happening here tonight isn’t justice. It’s the murder of another innocent man.” He said he’d proved his innocence “but the courts blocked me.” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who was among the execution witnesses, disputed Brown’s claims of innocence. “He has been the beneficiary of a judicial system that bent over backward at the local, state and federal levels, all the way to the United States Supreme Court, who have all affirmed his conviction and sentence,” she said.