Will the governor hear his appeal?

Quintin Jones, 41, African-American, is due to be executed this Wednesday evening in the state of Texas.

And shortly before that date, the convict tried to obtain mercy from Greg Abbott in a video.

In this four-minute film, shot in the visiting room and posted online by the New York Times, Quintin Jones addresses the Republican elected directly to ask him to commute his sentence to life imprisonment.

"I killed someone over twenty years ago," admits the man who, in 1999, beat his 83-year-old great-aunt to death with a baseball bat, before stealing 30 dollars to buy drugs.

But "I am no longer the same person, I have become a man on death row," he pleads, before adding, staring at the camera: "Mr. Governor, if you could find in your heart enough to grant me your mercy, I could continue to live to improve myself.

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A petition launched

At the same time, his defenders, including the sister of his victim but also the actress Sarah Paulson, posted a petition, also addressed to the governor of this southern state, which had collected more than 160,000 signatures on Wednesday morning. .

Greg Abbott, who has granted clemency to only one death row inmate in six years, did not react on Wednesday morning.

Quintin Jones' lawyers have appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States to seek a stay.

They maintain in particular that their client suffers from an "intellectual handicap" which makes him, according to them, ineligible for the death penalty.

If these efforts fail, he will receive a lethal injection in Huntsville Penitentiary at the end of the day.

A first since Biden came to power

No executions have taken place in the United States since the assumption of the presidency of Democrat Joe Biden, an opponent of the death penalty.

Even the most repressive states, like Texas, have with rare exceptions given up on this practice since the start of the pandemic.

Against the tide, the administration of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump had resumed in July 2020 with federal executions and carried out a record number (13) of lethal injections until the last days of his presidency.

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