Texas has carried out its 600th execution since reinstating the death penalty in 1982 after Edward Busby Jr. was executed Thursday evening for the 2004 killing of retired college professor Laura Lee Crane.
Busby, 55, was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m. at the state penitentiary in Huntsville following a lethal injection, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a temporary stay related to claims that he was intellectually disabled.
The execution marked the fourth in Texas this year and the 12th execution nationwide in 2026.
Busby was convicted of abducting 77-year-old Laura Lee Crane, a retired Texas Christian University professor, from a grocery store parking lot in Fort Worth in January 2004. Prosecutors said Crane was left bound in the trunk of her car with duct tape wrapped around her face, causing her to suffocate.
Authorities later arrested Busby in Oklahoma City while he was driving Crane’s vehicle. Investigators said he subsequently directed law enforcement officers to Crane’s body near the Texas-Oklahoma border.
Before the execution began, Busby offered repeated apologies to Crane’s family and expressed remorse for the crime.
“I am so sorry for what happened,” he said in his final statement. “Miss Crane was a lovely woman. I never meant anything bad to happen to her.”
He also told witnesses he wished he could “take it all back” and admitted he had “no right to get in that car.”
According to witnesses, Busby lost consciousness shortly after the lethal injection was administered and was officially pronounced dead 38 minutes later.
The case drew national attention because experts hired by both prosecutors and defense attorneys had previously concluded that Busby was intellectually disabled. Under a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, executing intellectually disabled individuals is unconstitutional.
Busby’s legal team argued that his death sentence should be overturned based on those findings. The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office had also earlier recommended reducing his sentence to life imprisonment.
However, the trial judge rejected the intellectual disability findings in 2023 and upheld the death sentence. Texas officials later argued that Busby’s appeals lacked merit and contained conflicting evidence.
The Supreme Court ultimately sided with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, allowing the execution to proceed after overturning a lower court’s stay order.
Busby’s co-defendant, Kathleen Latimer, is currently serving a life sentence for murder in connection with Crane’s death.
Bryan Mark Rigg, representing Crane’s family during the execution, said the family’s focus remained on justice and remembrance rather than revenge.
He described Crane as a respected educator who spent decades helping children overcome learning disabilities and said the case was about “accountability under the law and remembering the life of an extraordinary educator.”