A Texas death row inmate convicted of a fatal 2000 robbery could be the first person put to death in the country since a failed execution in Tennessee that has raised alarm over lethal injection.

Jamaal Howard was 20 years old when he robbed a convenience store and shot the clerk, killing 42-year-old Vickie Swartout, in Silsbee, north of Beaumont.

Howard was convicted less than a year later and sentenced to death in Hardin County.