James Pavatt, 73, was executed by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, on Thursday for the 2001 murder of his lover's estranged husband. He was pronounced dead at 10:12am local time, according to Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesperson Lance West.
Murder of Rob Andrew
Pavatt was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old advertising executive. Andrew was fatally shot in the garage of the Oklahoma City home he had previously shared with his wife as he picked up their two young children before Thanksgiving.
Pavatt, who attended the same church as the Andrew family, had been having an affair with Rob Andrew's wife, Brenda Andrew. She was convicted at a separate trial and sentenced to death.
Events leading to the shooting
Weeks before the shooting, Rob Andrew told police someone was trying to kill him after the brake lines on his car were cut. After the killing, Brenda Andrew told police that masked intruders shot her in the arm and fatally shot her husband.
Pavatt and Brenda Andrew went to Mexico with her two children after the shooting and were arrested three months later while reentering the US.
Clemency hearing and final meal
At a clemency hearing last month, Pavatt said he was "not guilty of shooting anyone" and that he had fallen in love with Brenda Andrew and believed "everything she told me." He told the board, "It was not until my trial that I began to see the extent to which I had been manipulated by Brenda. I can see why the jury believed that we were both involved in Rob's murder."
Prosecutors said Pavatt and Brenda Andrew plotted to kill her husband, and that no matter who fired the shots, both were equally guilty. For his last meal on Wednesday, Pavatt requested a lavish three-meat barbecue dinner and a strawberry milkshake. Witnesses described the execution as uneventful and said Pavatt did not have any last words.
Second execution scheduled in Texas
In Texas, John Allen Rubio, 46, is set to be put to death later. He was convicted of beheading three young children he was raising in a 2003 killing. Rubio and his girlfriend, Angela Camacho, were accused in the killings of three-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio and two-month-old Mary Jane Rubio in the apartment they shared in Brownsville, on Texas' border with Mexico.
Camacho pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence. Rubio's first capital murder conviction was overturned by an appeals court, which ruled that statements by Camacho were wrongly allowed as evidence. Rubio again pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity for his second trial but was once again convicted and sentenced to death.
According to court records, Rubio was not the biological father of the two older children but treated them as if they were his own. At various points, he claimed the children were possessed and that he was the "chosen one" intended to save the world. Defense experts diagnosed Rubio as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, a determination rejected by prosecution experts. Defense experts testified his childhood, filled with violence at home, "toxic" parents, drug use and prostitution, damaged him developmentally.
The apartment building where the children were killed was later demolished and the land was turned into a park and a community garden. Rubio is set to be executed at the state prison in Huntsville later today.
