Thomas Bartlett Whitaker

Thomas Bartlett Whitaker (born December 31, 1979) is an American convicted under the Texas law of parties of murdering two family members as a 23-year-old. Whitaker was convicted and sentenced to death in March 2007 for the December 10, 2003, murders of his mother and 19-year-old brother. He spent years on death row at the Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas, before the commutation of his death sentence. Whitaker's father, whom Whitaker had also attempted to have murdered, had pleaded with Governor Greg Abbott for the commutation of Whitaker's sentence, stating that by executing his son, the state was simply making him a victim once again. On February 22, 2018, about 40 minutes before his scheduled 6:00 pm execution, Whitaker had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole by Abbott, the first such commutation by Abbott and the first in the state since 2007, in which Governor Rick Perry commuted Kenneth Foster's death sentence. As of September 2021, Whitaker is incarcerated at the McConnell Unit near Beeville, Texas.