San Francisco Frontiers - Texas man to be executed after more than 30 years on Death Row

Brent Brewer, 53, is to be put to death by lethal injection some time after 6:00 pm Central Time (0000 GMT) at the Texas State Penitentiary in the town of Huntsville, prison officials said.

Brewer was sentenced to death in 1991 for the 1990 murder of 66-year-old Robert Laminack in a robbery that netted $140 in cash.

Laminack had been giving a ride to Brewer and his girlfriend, Krystie Lynn Nystrom, to a Salvation Army facility when he was fatally stabbed.

Nystrom was sentenced to life in prison.

Brewer appealed for a stay of execution this week to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles but it was unanimously denied.

A motion filed with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was also rejected.

Brewer's lawyers had asked the appeals court to halt the execution on the grounds that a psychiatrist, Dr Richard Coons, who testified at his sentencing retrial had since been discredited.

Brewer's 1991 death sentence was reviewed in 2009 and a jury sentenced him to death once again after hearing the expert testimony of Coons.

Coons, despite never having interviewed Brewer, testified that he had "no conscience" and would commit violent acts in the future.

Despite a ruling in a later case that Coons lacked any scientific basis for his opinions, the Texas appeals court declined to halt Brewer's execution.

Shawn Nolan, an attorney for Brewer, said allowing the execution to go ahead "without an opportunity to challenge Dr Coons's false and unscientific testimony" was an injustice.

Brewer's lawyers also filed a petition for clemency on the grounds that a juror in his 2009 resentencing trial misunderstood the jury instructions and wanted to impose a life sentence.

The juror ended up voting for the death penalty because she was under the mistaken impression that at least 10 other votes were needed to deliver a life sentence.

- 'Moral compass' -

In a video released by his lawyers, Brewer expressed remorse and apologized to the family of his victim.

"I am sorry for what I did," he said. "Even if it doesn't change the outcome at least they get to hear it before I go.

"The 53-year-old guy you're looking at now is not the 19-year-old I was in April of '90," Brewer added. "I don't even know that kid."

"When you're 19 or 20 and you're confused, or you're on drugs and drinking, or you're hanging around the wrong people you have no real value system," he said. "I guess you'd call it a moral compass.

"I sobered up in the county jail and realized that I had done something I can't undo," he said. "And I just have had to live with that every day."

There have been six executions in Texas this year and 20 in the United States.

According to a Gallup Poll released this week, 53 percent of Americans support the death penalty for someone convicted of murder, the lowest level since 1972.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 US states, while three others -- California, Oregon and Pennsylvania -- have observed a moratorium on its use.

C.Williams--SFF