Execution Report: Aaron Foust

Aaron Christopher Foust, 26, was executed by lethal injection on 28 April 1999 in Huntsville, Texas for the robbery and murder of a man in his apartment.

On Sunday, 18 May 1997, Foust, then 24, and Jamal Brown, 23, went to the Fort Worth apartment of David Ward, 43 and demanded money from him. The assailants tied Ward's hands and feet with speaker wire, and then Foust strangled him to death. They then ransacked the apartment and stole electronics equipment, liquor, credit cards, cash, and the victim's automobile.

Ward's body was found two days later. His car was also found that day, on fire, in Arlington. Three days after that, Foust and Brown were arrested after trying to use the victim's credit card at an Arlington restaurant.

Shortly after his conviction in May of 1998, Foust waived his right to appeal. He was executed after spending only 49 weeks on Death Row and 101 weeks after committing the crime. The average time on Death Row prior to execution is 11 years. The shortest time a Texas prisoner has spent awaiting lethal injection is 36 weeks.

"Soon as I got here, I found out I could drop my appeals," Foust said in an interview from Death Row the week before his execution. "So I wrote a letter to my attorney and the judge ... I don't want to spend the rest of my life without a woman. I don't want to spend the rest of my life being told what to do, not having any freedom. I'm guilty. I did it."

Jamal Brown's case had not yet been tried at the time of Foust's execution, and his name is too common for a public records search to find out what happened, but he did not receive a death sentence.

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