Updated on: May 14, 2026 / 9:52 PM EDT / CBS/AP

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A North Texas man whom experts for both prosecutors and defense attorneys had said was intellectually disabled became the 600th person executed in Texas since 1982, put to death Thursday evening for the killing of a retired 77-year-old college professor.

Edward Busby, Jr. TDCJ

Edward Busby, Jr. was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m. local time following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, hours after a divided Supreme Court lifted a stay over his disability claims. The execution followed a series of last-minute legal efforts by Busby's attorneys in a bid to spare his life after the nation's high court lifted a stay hours earlier.

Busby was condemned for the suffocation death of Laura Lee Crane, a 77-year-old retired professor from Texas Christian University who prosecutors say was abducted from a grocery store parking lot in January 2004 and left to suffocate in the trunk of her car with duct tape wrapped around her…