Brent Ray Brewer's Final Words Before Texas Execution

A prisoner in Texas has been executed for murder after spending 32 years in prison.

Brent Ray Brewer died on Thursday after receiving a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time.

Brewer was convicted and sentenced to death in 1991 for the 1990 robbery and murder of Robert Doyle Laminack in Amarillo, Texas. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Brewer's final appeal on Thursday afternoon, which argued that the death sentence was the product of invalid testimony.

According to the Associated Press, prior to his death, Brewer said: "I would like to tell the family of the victim that I could never figure out the words to fix what I have broken.

"I just want you to know that this 53-year-old is not the same reckless 19-year-old kid from 1990," he continued, his voice cracking. "I hope you find peace, and I mean it."

Laminack's family watched through a window just feet away as he died. Details regarding his final meal are yet to be released.

On Tuesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed an appeal without reviewing the argument, saying that the claim should have been raised earlier.

Shawn Nolan, one of Brewer's lawyers, expressed concern over the appeal court's refusal to address the "injustice" of executing Brewer without allowing him the opportunity to challenge what he called the "false and unscientific testimony" of Dr. Richard Coons, an expert witness at his resentencing trial in 2009.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously voted 7-0 against commuting Brewer's death sentence to a lesser penalty, rejecting a six-month reprieve as well.

Prosecutors stated that Brewer and his girlfriend initially approached Laminack outside his Amarillo, Texas store before attacking him, stabbing him in the neck, and robbing him of $140.

Convicted of capital murder at 19, Brewer's death sentence was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007, citing improper jury instructions. It was found that jurors were not allowed to give sufficient weight to factors that might cause them to impose a life sentence rather than death.

Brewer's lawyers alleged that during a resentencing trial in 2009, Coons claimed without scientific basis that Brewer had no conscience and posed a future danger. They argued that Brewer had no history of violence while in prison.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had previously labeled Coons' testimony about future dangerousness as "insufficiently reliable" in a 2010 case involving a different death row prisoner, ruling that he should not have been allowed to testify.

Coons has previously defended his work as an expert witness.

Robert Love, the Randall County district attorney who prosecuted Brewer, denied presenting false testimony and suggested that Coons' testimony was not material to the jury's verdict.

Speaking prior to being brought up for execution, Brewer expressed remorse for his actions but maintained that he had reinvented himself.

He said: "Even though it's 33 years ago, I don't even know where to begin. Now, how do you fix something that can't be fixed? The 53-year-old guy you're looking at now is not the 19-year-old I was in April of '90. I don't even know that kid. How do you explain stabbing somebody and then running off and you don't know what happened until later on?"

"When you're 19, 20 and you're confused, or you're on drugs, or you're drinking, or you're hanging around the wrong people, you have no real value system. I guess you'd call it a moral compass," he said. "I sobered up in the county jail and realized that I had done something I can't undo, and I had to live with that every day."

Brewer is the seventh inmate in Texas and the 21st in the U.S. put to death this year.

Update 11/10/23 6:23 a.m. ET: This article was updated to add context.