Brent Ray Brewer is set for execution in Texas despite claiming false testimony led to his conviction for fatally stabbing a man while robbing him of $140 more than 33 years ago

A Texas inmate says false testimony landed him on death row and he will now be executed for the fatal stabbing and robbery of a man 30 years ago.

Brent Ray Brewer, 53, was convicted of the 1990 murder of Robert Laminack, 66, who was attacked as he gave Brewer and his girlfriend a ride to a Salvation Army location in Amarillo, Texas.

Brewer stabbed the victim in the neck during the ride. He and his then-girlfriend, Krystie Lynn Nystrom, took Laminack’s wallet containing $140 and fled the scene, prosecutors said.

Brewer was originally convicted and sentenced to death in 1991. His case was later overturned and sent for a new trial. In 2009 he was sentenced to death again.

Brewer will be executed Thursday at a state prison in Huntsville, Texas.

Prosecutors said Brewer, in the passenger seat behind Laminack, reached forward, grabbed Laminack and fatally stabbed him with a butterfly knife.

The pair went to a friend’s apartment shortly after the murder to change their bloodied clothes, then headed to Red Oak, Texas, where they were arrested on May 8, 1990.

Brewer’s lawyers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution, arguing that prosecutors relied on false expert testimony during the 2009 trial.

During the trial, Texas forensic psychiatrist Richard Coons claimed that Brewer would be a future danger, a legal finding necessary to impose a death sentence.

Brewer’s attorneys allege that Coons lied and stated without any scientific basis that Brewer had no conscience and would pose a future danger, even though Brewer had no history of violence in prison.

The prisonerwho was 19 at the time of Laminack’s murder, said he has been a model inmate with a good behavioral history and has never faced charges for a violent record.

“The 53-year-old man you’re looking at now is not the 19-year-old I was in April 1990. I don’t even know that guy,” Brewer said in his bid for leniency.

“I sobered up in the county jail and realized I had done something I can’t undo,” he said. ‘And I had to live with that every day.’

He said he has been trying to become a better person by participating in a faith-based program for death row inmates in September 2022.

He has earned multiple certificates for completing the program courses after taking classes and completing assignments.

The inmate has also expressed remorse for the killing and a desire to apologize to Laminack’s family.

“Words are kind of small when you’ve taken someone’s life and when someone is gone so permanently,” he said. “I don’t even know if they want to hear that.”

‘But I would like to tell them that personally. Even if it doesn’t change the outcome, I would like them to hear it before I leave,” he said through tears.

Brewer wrote in a letter to Laminack’s family, “I will never be able to repay or replace the pain(s) worry(s) I have caused you.” I come to you in true humility and with an honest heart and ask for your forgiveness.”

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday dismissed an appeal on the issue without reviewing the merits of the argument, saying the claim should have been filed earlier.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 7-0 Tuesday against commuting Brewer’s death sentence to a lesser sentence. Members also rejected granting a six-month extension.

“We are deeply troubled that the (Court of Appeals) refuses to address the injustice of allowing Brent Brewer to be executed without the opportunity to review Dr.’s false and unscientific testimony. Coon,” said Shawn Nolan, one of Brewer’s attorneys.

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentences given to Brewer and two other Texas inmates after ruling that juries in their case were not properly instructed when they decided the men should be executed.

The Supreme Court ruled that jurors could not give sufficient weight to factors that might lead them to impose a life sentence instead of the death penalty.

Brewer was abused as a child and suffered from mental illness, factors jurors were not allowed to take into account, his attorneys argued.

In a 2010 ruling in the case of another death row inmate, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals called Coon’s testimony about future dangers “insufficiently reliable” and that he should not have testified.

Randall County District Attorney Robert Love, whose office prosecuted Brewer, denied in court documents that prosecutors provided false testimony and said Coon’s testimony was “irrelevant to the jury’s verdict.”

Last week, Michele Douglas, one of the jurors at Brewer’s 2009 trial, said: said in an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle that a misleading instruction wrongly caused her to vote for execution.

State Rep. Joe Moody, who has tried to pass legislation to fix the misleading instruction cited by Douglas, said it was “morally wrong” for Brewer to be executed under these circumstances.

Brewer would be the seventh inmate in Texas and the 21st in the US to be put to death this year.