HUNTSVILLE, Tx. (PM) – A Texas death row inmate who claimed he was intellectually disabled has been executed for fatally stabbing his two stepsons during a 2007 attack in their Dallas home that also killed his wife.
Robert Sparks underwent a lethal injection Wednesday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. At 6:39 p.m., he was pronounced dead on a prison gurney, 23 minutes after being injected with a sole lethal dose of pentobarbital.
The 45-year-old Sparks was condemned to death for the slayings of 9-year-old Harold Sublet and 10-year-old Raekwon Agnew.
Attempts by Sparks’ attorneys to prevent his execution on multiple claims, including that he was intellectually disabled and accusations his jury was influenced by a bailiff who donned a tie showing his support of the death penalty, were refused by the appeals court, then subsequently, the US Supreme Court.
Sparks was the 16th inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the seventh in Texas. Robert Sparks, according to The Marshall Project, was the 1,506th person executed in the United States since 1976, the 565th person executed in Texas, and the 1,328th person executed by lethal injection.
