US5 min(s) read
Published 12:54 17 Jun 2026 GMT
An American inmate has opened up about some of the thoughts he's had on his own life after being arrested and convicted.
Texas native Jeremy Busby was sentenced to 75 years in prison after being convicted of murder in 1999.
Just 19 at the time of the shooting, he was with a woman when they were approached by two men in a motel parking lot, who became hostile as they believed he was there to buy drugs.
They were mistaken, Jeremy says, and after he was threatened with physical violence and tried to stop the situation from escalating, he fatally shot the man because he feared for his life.
With no previous arrests for violence, Jeremy was held for four months in Dallas County Jail, as his website JoinJeremy adds that he "was represented at trial by a defense attorney who conducted no pretrial investigation and called no witnesses."
An all-white jury would find him guilty, and Jeremy remains incarcerated, almost 20 years after the “Stand Your Ground law” was codified in Texas back in 2007, which supporters argue would have strengthened his self-defense claim.
The Texas-based prisoner spoke exclusively to VT about his experiences both before prison and after spending over 25 years behind bars.
Jeremy opened up about losing his single mother at age three, while also growing up in the foster care system, surrounded by drugs, guns, and violence.
"I grew up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. My mom was kidnapped and murdered when I was three years old, and that set off a bunch of negative consequences in my life," he said.
Jeremy explained: “Most of those negative consequences prohibited me and stagnated my growth, and prohibited me from understanding what humanity or life was really all about."
“It was only after I came to prison that I realized that the world is a lot bigger than the crime-ridden neighborhood that I grew up in, for example, that average people don't carry guns and don't settle disputes with violence,” the inmate admitted.
Jeremy has since become an academic and a journalist while in prison, taking time to attend college and work on his craft.
Reflecting on his life in the outside world, he admitted: "I was surrounded with crime, a bunch of poverty and poor education - my world was very, very small and I didn't have an outlet to see the bigger picture of people who were going to work and developing their skills, going off to college..."
He admitted that these concepts were first introduced to him in prison, adding: "Those are the only things I can actually say that I wish I had done differently; it wasn't very much that I could have done differently."
Jeremy spoke about some of the issues in society and how people with challenging socioeconomic backgrounds can struggle to be successful, stating: "I wish that there were more resources for people like me."
The journalist, who previously became the first black staff writer at Texas prison newspaper, The ECHO, added: "Because all the resources and all the things we're taught are very limited, there wasn't very much that I could do with the information that I had."
He said his life was transformed after going to prison because he gained greater access to information.
"That's pretty much the nutshell about my youth, because I committed this crime at the age of 19, and I've been in prison ever since."
Speaking about the failed structure of society, Jeremy said: "I think we are still faced with the same situations here in prison.
"I see young guys come in all the time, that reminds me of my 19-year-old self; they have a single-parent household, sometimes they grow up as an orphan as I did, and they don't have any positive role models."
Jeremy believes that this is an issue that needs to be resolved to stop this vicious cycle, also citing a lack of positive role models.
He then made a powerful revelation about many in similar situations to him: "The first time they left their neighborhood, the crime-ridden ghetto they grew up in, is when they got in the back seat of the police car.
"The first time that they left the city where they grew up is when they were transported to the prison system, so it's hard to expect people who wake up surrounded by gang violence, drugs, and poverty, as well as people who are suffering from drug addiction and mental illness."
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He also opened up about strain theory, which Jeremy says explains how society functions across the world, as "people have to work with the resources that they have available to them."
"When you don't have the proper resources available, then you have to utilize abnormal methods," the inmate said.
Jeremy explained: "There are solutions to fix that. And sadly, in the 28 years, this is my 28th year in prison, I have seen little to no change in any of it."
Looking back at his sentencing, Jeremy candidly admitted: "I remember minutes afterwards they locked me into this jail cell. I was all by myself, and I stayed there for, like, about an hour, and I was constantly thinking about what that meant for me."
"What it really means is that I'm going to have to spend at least the next 30 calendar years inside of prison before I become eligible for release back into society, and that hit me pretty hard."
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Published 09:11 08 Jun 2023 GMT
A death row inmate who died by lethal injection on Tuesday evening penned a chilling final statement before his execution.
Michael Tisius's execution went ahead on Tuesday (June 6) despite several former jurors saying they hoped his sentence would be commuted to life imprisonment.
The double murder convict fatally shot two jail guards – Leon Egley and Jason Acton – on June 22, 2000, during a botched plot to free his former cellmate.
The 42-year-old – who was 19 at the time of his crime – was said to have been neglected as a child and was homeless by the time he was in his early teenage years, KCTV5 reports.
The jury spent hours deliberating in July 2010 when asked to sentence Tisius for the murders. Ultimately, they decided on the death penalty.
More recently, six jurors, including two alternates, gave sworn affidavits saying they would either support or decline to oppose if Tisius' sentence was commuted to life in prison.
However, Tisius's execution ultimately took place on the scheduled date.
Per The Mirror, he shared in his final statement: "I am holding tightly to my faith. It’s all I have to take with me. I am sorry it had to come to this in this way. I wish I could have made things right while I was still here.
"I really did try to become a better man. I really tried hard to give as much as I could to as many as I could. I tried to forgive others as I wish to be forgiven. And I pray that God will forgive those who condemn me.
"Just as He forgave those who condemned Him. I am sorry. And not because I am at the end. But because I truly am sorry. And I need to say that I love you Truffle. Seacrest Out!"
"I feel angry and remorseful," former juror Jason Smith told The New York Times ahead of Tisius's execution. "I feel that I wronged Michael. I hated having a part in somebody dying."
Another former juror revealed that during the time of the 2010 death sentence, he was unable to read English – a requirement for jury duty in the state of Missouri. A federal court stayed Tisius' execution so that an investigation into the claim could be carried out, but an appeals court overruled that decision last week.
Tisius' lawyers are arguing that because Tisius was a teenager at the time of the murders, his brain was not yet fully developed and he was more susceptible to manipulation.
Roy Vance – the former cellmate who Tisius tried to free at the time of the killings – once bragged that the death row inmate was a "a kid in a grown man’s body and I knew I could manipulate him into what I wanted him to do," per the Kansas City Star.
In June 2000, Tisius was sent to the Randolph County Jail to serve a 30-day probation violation sentence for theft. He had previously met his cellmate, 27-year-old Roy Vance, through mutual friends. Vance was facing a 50-year sentence at the time.
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Published 13:46 21 Jul 2024 GMT
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Published 14:06 14 Nov 2023 GMT
A Texas man who spent more than three decades on death row uttered his final words to his victim's family.
On Thursday (November 9), Brent Ray Brewer, 53, was put to death by lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary in the town of Huntsville, prison officials confirmed.
He was convicted in 1991 for the killing of 66-year-old Robert Laminack in April 1990. The victim offered to give Brewer and his then-girlfriend, Krystie Lynn Nystrom, a lift to a Salvation Army hub in Amarillo, however, he was fatally stabbed in the neck by the couple, who then robbed him of $140.
Nystrom was sentenced to life in prison while Brewer was sentenced to death.
The inmate appealed for a stay of execution to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles but was unanimously denied. He was killed by lethal injection at 6:38PM Central Time last week.
But before he met his fate, Brewer sent a final message to Laminack's family - who were present for the execution - and it was delivered by the prison warden.
According to The Mirror, the prisoner said: "I hope you find peace, and I mean it," and added, "I would like to tell the family of the victim that I could never figure out the words to fix what I have broken."
"I just want you to know that this 53-year-old is not the same reckless 19-year-old kid from 1990," he concluded.
As the drugs took effect in Brewer's body, he gasped twice, snored several times, and then took a few quiet breaths. Within 30 seconds, all movement stopped, per Daily Mail.
Laminack's daughter, Debra Corbin, also offered some words after watching her father's killer being put to death, sharing: "Brent Ray Brewer was in prison more than 33 years. Our mom says our family has been in prison 33 years. We have been released today."
The execution came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to step in over the inmate's claims that prosecutors had depended on false and discredited expert testimony at his 2009 resentencing trial.
Brewer's lawyers had argued that a prosecution expert, Richard Coons, falsely claimed that the prisoner would be a threat in society - a legal finding required to impose a death sentence.
"The Brent that Texas wished to execute is long gone," defense attorney Shawn Nolan said after the final appeal was rejected, via Daily Mail. "The Brent they are killing tonight is a kind, generous, peaceful, and thoughtful man who spent the vast majority of his time repenting and in religious studies."
"He is profoundly remorseful for his crime, committed when he was just nineteen, and he would have done anything to take back the pain he caused the victim's family," he added.
Brewer also apologized to Laminack's family in a video released by his lawyers. "I am sorry for what I did. Even if it doesn't change the outcome at least they get to hear it before I go," he said.
"When you're 19 or 20 and you're confused, or you're on drugs and drinking, or you're hanging around the wrong people, you have no real value system," he continued. "I guess you'd call it a moral compass."
"I sobered up in the county jail and realized that I had done something I can't undo. And I just have had to live with that every day," he concluded.
us news2 min(s) read
Published 11:10 09 Dec 2024 GMT
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Published 11:13 31 Jan 2019 GMT
A death row inmate has been executed in Texas 30 years after he was sentenced to death for killing a policeman.
Robert Mitchell Jennings was pronounced dead at 6.33pm local time after being taken from his cell at 6.04pm, becoming the first person to be put to death in the US in 2019.
Before his lethal injection at a prison in Huntsville, the 61-year-old is said to have advised those around him to "enjoy life's moments, because we may never get them back."
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His last words were: "To my friends and family, it was a nice journey. To the family of the police officer, I hope this finds you peace and be well and stay safe. Enjoy life's moments because we may never get them back."
Jennings was convicted of murdering Houston Police Department Vice Officer Elston Howard in July 1988 in Houston, Texas.
According to Houston Chronicle and prison records, the 24-year-old was in the bookstore serving an arrest warrant on a clerk for showing films without a license when Jennings entered, having just robbed a neighbouring adult movie theatre.
He shot him three times and left the officer collapsed on the floor, to eventually die of his wounds.
A co-defendant, Robert Harvell, was driving the getaway car, but ordered Jennings out of the vehicle when he found out that he had shot a "security guard." When Jennings refused, Harvell shot him in the hand, official records state.
Police later arrested Jennings at a hospital where he sought treatment for his wound and Harvell was arrested at his mother's house.
Jennings, a high school drop-out, was given the death penalty and his co-defendant was given a 55-year sentence for his role in the crime.
Before Jennings' death, The Forgiveness Foundation - "a non-profit prison ministry devoted to bringing the word of God to death-row inmates and internet recipients" - pleaded for clemency for him, arguing that he should be spared given his tragic past.
According to their website, the 61-year-old's mother became pregnant with him after being raped, and "frequently blamed Robert for her failing to complete her education."
In addition, he "changed places of residence frequently as a child and had no lasting, positive adult influence in his life."
After entering the juvenile justice system at the age of 10, he eventually dropped out of school in the ninth grade when he began using drugs.
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He served 10 years in prison for aggravated robbery and burglary with intent to commit theft and was on parole for this crime when he fatally shot Howard.
While in prison, he obtained his GED and completed more than forty hours of college credit.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals allegedly rejected two requests to halt his execution.
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