Texas is scheduled to execute John Allen Rubio, 46, by lethal injection on Thursday, November 12, at the Huntsville Unit, more than 23 years after he was convicted of capital murder in the March 11, 2003 killings of his three young children in Brownsville. The execution moved onto its final track this week after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously on Tuesday to deny clemency, and the state's highest criminal court dismissed his latest appeal.
Source: RGV Times / Cameron County District Attorney's Office
Rubio's is one of two executions scheduled in the United States on Thursday — Oklahoma also plans to carry out the execution of James Pavatt in McAlester in the morning — and neither man's outcome can be described as final until the state corrections departments confirm it, according to execution-tracking reporting.
March 11, 2003, in Brownsville
The killings happened in an apartment in Brownsville, the Cameron County city on the U.S.–Mexico border, where Rubio lived with his common-law wife, Angela Camacho, and their three children, aged three years, 14 months and two months. All three children were killed on March 11, 2003. Rubio told police he believed the children were possessed by evil spirits, according to case reporting. Awaaz Punjab does not name child victims.
Camacho, the children's mother, was convicted for her role in the killings and sentenced to life imprisonment, with parole eligibility after 40 years. Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz has described the crime as one of the most brutal in the county's history.
Two trials, two death sentences
Rubio was first convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2003; his insanity defence was rejected. A Texas court overturned that first death sentence in 2007, forcing a retrial, at which he was again sentenced to death. He has been held on death row at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit while the appeals ran their course over more than two decades.
How the November 12 date was set
On January 13, 2026 — a day after Rubio lost his final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court — District Attorney Saenz filed a motion seeking an execution date. On February 26, 2026, the execution was scheduled for November 12, 2026, at the Huntsville Unit, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison that houses the state's death chamber, known as the Walls Unit.
On October 7, 2026, Cameron County District Judge Noe Gonzalez ruled that Rubio is mentally competent to be executed, finding after psychiatric evaluations that he understands he is to be executed and why — a legal requirement before a Texas execution can proceed.
The final week: courts and the clemency board close the doors
In the first week of November, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Rubio's latest writ challenging his sentence and denied a stay of execution, characterising the repeated filings as an abuse of the writ. On Tuesday, November 10, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously against both a 90-day reprieve and a commutation of his death sentence to a lesser penalty, according to the Cameron County District Attorney's Office. As of Tuesday evening, no further filing that would automatically halt the execution had been reported.
Source: RGV Times / Cameron County District Attorney's Office
Last-minute court filings remain legally possible until the final hours, and only a court order or a governor's reprieve can stop a Texas execution once clemency has been denied. If no order arrives, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will carry out the lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit and confirm the outcome afterwards.
What happens next
District Attorney Saenz has confirmed he will witness the execution in Huntsville. Rubio will be transferred from the Polunsky Unit to the Huntsville Unit for the procedure. Texas carries out all of its executions at the Huntsville Unit by lethal injection, and the Department of Criminal Justice customarily confirms the prisoner's death and releases a brief account of his final statement afterwards.
For Brownsville and Cameron County, Thursday closes a case that has moved through two trials, a reversal, a second death sentence, a competency fight and more than two decades of appeals — one of the longest-running and most closely watched capital cases in the Rio Grande Valley.