Nationwide — LeJames Norman, a 40-year-old African American man from Texas, was executed Wednesday evening for killing three people during a failed 2005 robbery, ending a case that had kept him on death row for more than two decades. He was given a final chance to speak before the lethal injection, but he quietly shook his head when the prison warden asked if he had any last words.
He was put to death at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Alabama, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his attorneys’ request to stop the execution earlier that day, according to Fox News. When the warden asked if he had any last words, Norman shook his head without speaking. He then lay on a thin mattress placed on a steel table as his sister, two of his children and a friend watched from nearby.
The case centered on the deaths of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38. The three were inside the Edna home they shared when Norman and Ker’Sean Ramey went there in 2005 looking for cocaine they believed was inside. Court records show the men intended to steal the drugs, but they did not find any cocaine. Norman fatally shot all three people during the robbery.
He was arrested about five months later while attempting to enter the United States from Mexico. He eventually pleaded guilty to capital murder, leaving a jury to determine whether he would receive the death penalty. Ramey was also convicted of the killings and sentenced to death. His execution is scheduled for the following week.
In Norman’s final moments, prison officials gave him a lethal dose of pentobarbital. He took several deep breaths, appeared to yawn, and made a few snoring sounds before becoming still. A physician later examined him, and officials pronounced him dead at 6:44 p.m., about 30 minutes after the execution began. No family members or friends of Roberts, Peacock or Lopez attended the execution.
Norman became the fifth person executed in Texas in 2026. His death also came as Ramey’s case moved toward its own scheduled execution. The two men had faced separate legal proceedings after being convicted in connection with the same 2005 killings. Norman’s execution marked the final stage of a case that had remained on death row for years.