Texas Execution to Proceed as Georgia Execution Is Paused
LeJames Norman, 40, is scheduled to be executed in Texas on Wednesday for the shooting deaths of three people, while a Georgia execution planned for the same evening has been halted by a court order. The two cases had been set less than an hour apart before a judge intervened late Tuesday in Georgia. The Guardian
Norman is scheduled to die by injection of pentobarbital, a sedative used for lethal injection, at 6pm CDT at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was sentenced to death for the 2005 fatal shootings in Edna of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38. If carried out, it would be the fifth execution in Texas this year. The Guardian
The same triple shooting led to a second death sentence. Ker'Sean Ramey was also convicted and sentenced to death, with his execution set for next week. Texas prison records list Ker'sean Olajuwa Ramey, inmate number 999519, as scheduled for September 23, 2026, and list Jamaal Howard, inmate number 999383, for October 7. The records state that Norman fled on foot after the shooting, was arrested at the border of Mexico, and was taken to the Jackson County Jail. The Guardian
Norman's final state-level options narrowed on Monday. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted against commuting his sentence, meaning reducing it to a lesser punishment, or recommending a 90-day reprieve, a temporary delay. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied a motion from his attorneys for a stay, a formal pause, based on claims about prosecution actions. His attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that denial. The Guardian
In Georgia, Stacey Humphreys, 53, had been scheduled for execution at 7pm EDT on Wednesday at the state prison near Jackson. He was convicted of malice murder, Georgia's legal term for intentional killing, in the 2003 killings of Cyndi Williams, 33, and Lori Brown, 21. Georgia had yet to carry out any execution this year as of September 16. A judge issued a stay late Tuesday, finding Humphreys entitled to a hearing under the state's new Survivor Justice law before the execution could proceed. The Guardian
His lawyers had sought the stay to pursue resentencing under that law, which allows abuse victims to have sentences reconsidered if crimes can be tied to abuse suffered. The Georgia Department of Corrections 2026 press releases page lists an entry titled '2026 Execution Date Set for Cobb County Murderer' dated August 27. The Guardian
The broader context here is a crowded late-summer execution calendar and divergent procedural paths. Florida accounted for more than half of the 25 executions already carried out in the United States this year as of September 16. Earlier scheduling had placed three executions within a 24-hour period that week in Texas, Georgia and Alabama, with Texas and Georgia within an hour of each other. That clustering follows an earlier plan in which Tennessee, Alabama and Oklahoma set executions for the same Thursday, which would have been the first triple execution day in the United States since 2010. Separately, UN experts have urged an immediate halt to the execution of Christa Pike, scheduled for 30 September 2026, and urged that her death sentence be commuted. The Guardian
For what comes next, the split outcome on Wednesday is instructive. Texas is proceeding through executive clemency denial and appellate denial toward federal review, the conventional late-stage sequence. Georgia has introduced a statutory resentencing gateway tied to prior abuse, with a trial-level hearing requirement sufficient to stop the warrant. Whether that hearing delays or reopens the sentence will determine if Georgia records its first execution of the year, and whether Texas proceeds on consecutive weeks with Norman and Ramey. The Guardian
