Texas executes man

Texas executed a man by lethal injection yesterday for the rape and murder of a 93-year-old woman.

William Murray, 39, was condemned for the 1998 slaying of the elderly woman in the north Texas town of Kaufman. He sexually assaulted, beat and strangled his victim and made off with some change from a jar and a knife.

"The victim ... had an Ace bandage tied around her neck and into her mouth, which was soaked with blood," the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a summary of the crime.

Murray was the ninth convict put to death this year by America's most active death penalty state and the 414th since Texas resumed executions in 1982 after the US Supreme Court lifted a ban on the practice in 1976.

In his last statement while strapped to a gurney in the state's execution chamber in Huntsville, Murray apologized to the victim's family: "I want to say to the family, I'm sorry."

For his last meal he requested 10 chili cheese enchiladas, a cheese pizza, one cheeseburger and sweet tea. Last meals are a ritual of US executions.

Texas has 11 more executions scheduled for the rest of 2008 and four in 2009 as it works through a "backlog" caused by a seven-month halt to capital punishment imposed by the US Supreme Court as it heard a challenge to the three-drug cocktail method used in lethal injections.

It rejected that challenge in April, paving the way for a resumption of executions in the United States.