Man who bludgeoned aunt with bat in Fort Worth house is executed without media witness
A man who beat to death his great-aunt with her baseball bat after an elusive search for her purse inside a house on East First Street in Fort Worth was executed Wednesday evening in a Texas prison by chemical injection.
Quintin Jones killed Berthena Bryant, 83, in September 1999 when she refused to lend him money. After she was dead, he took $30 from her that he intended to use to buy drugs.
Associated Press and Huntsville Item reporters were scheduled as media witnesses to Jones’ execution, but they did not view it because of a miscommunication among Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials, the Item reported.
Jones was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m., about 12 minutes after an official gave him a dose of pentobarbital at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, TDCJ said.
Jones became the 571st inmate to receive a lethal injection in Texas since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982 and was the first to die without a media witness.
“The death penalty is — and should be — reserved for the most heinous of crimes, the worst of the worst,” Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Sharen Wilson wrote in a statement. “Quintin Jones’s case qualifies.”
“This case has been reviewed for years by judges throughout the court system who always affirmed the jury’s verdict,” Wilson wrote. “The law allows it, the facts justify it, the jury decided it. Today, the State of Texas carried out the jury’s verdict.”
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Tuesday voted 7-0 against clemency.
Jones’ attorney on Wednesday filed a civil rights complaint against the board that alleged that race played “an impermissible role” in its denial of Jones’ petition, the Associated Press reported.
The Texas Attorney General’s Office denied Jones’ allegations. Later Wednesday, U.S. District Judge George Hanks Jr. dismissed the complaint, writing that “while Jones raises troubling allegations, he has not substantiated them.”
The U.S. Supreme Court early Wednesday evening declined to halt Jones’ execution.
Jones told a detective his alternate personality “James” killed Bryant.
Now 41, Jones was convicted of murder in February 2001 and sentenced to death.
The Court of Criminal Appeals on May 12 denied a stay of execution. Attorneys for Jones filed a motion asserting that his death sentence had been obtained by false and misleading scientific evidence, and that he was intellectually disabled.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story was originally published May 19, 2021 at 7:50 PM.
