Taking advantage of the truce granted by the pandemic, the executioner in Texas also returned to work permanently. Overnight, the most active US state on the death penalty front executed a man convicted of triple murder. Receiving the lethal injection in the Huntsville penitentiary was 45-year-old John Hummel, who was pronounced dead at 6:49 pm local time. In 2009, Hummel stabbed his pregnant wife and stepfather, after which he beat his five-year-old daughter to death with a baseball bat before setting fire to their home in Fort Worth, southern United States. According to the accusation, the crime was committed because the 45-year-old wanted to start a new life with another woman. Hummel’s execution was supposed to have taken place on March 17, 2020, but an appeals court had postponed the term in extremis “in consideration of the health crisis”. The judges stressed that an execution required “enormous resources”, that is to say dozens of prison guards, lawyers, witnesses and so on, creating risky situations for possible infections. Texas resumed executions as early as May 19: that day Quintin Jones, an African American who had killed his grandmother, was executed. (1 JUL – deg)
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