Quintin Jones was executed by the state of Texas on Wednesday night, the state’s first in almost a year. Jones, 41, received the lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville for beating his 83-year-old great-aunt Berthena Bryant to death with a baseball bat in September 1999. Jones had gone to her house looking for money for drugs, and when she refused to give him any money, he killed her, court documents said.
He was sentenced to death in 2001 in Tarrant County and had been on death row since then. Due to Covid-19, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals last year issued several stays of execution. Relatives of Jones had also asked authorities to spare his life and change his sentence to life in prison. They said they had forgiven him as he “has changed for the better” while in prison.