US state executes convict

Arkansas has executed a convict after state authorities put a temporary hold to allow the US Supreme Court to consider motions for stays of execution, the media reported.

Thursday night's execution was the fourth carried out in a span of a week ending a frantic schedule caused by the looming expiration of the state's supply of lethal injection drugs, reports CNN.

Kenneth Williams, 38, was was initially sentenced to life in prison for the 1998 killing of Dominique Hurd, a University of Arkansas cheerleader.

But a month after his sentence, he escaped from the Cummins prison in October 1999.

Authorities said Williams then went to former deputy prison warden Cecil Boren's home nearby, confiscated his guns and shot him before taking off with his vehicle.

"I was more than wrong. The crime I perpetrated against you all was senseless," Williams said in his last words during his execution.

He died by lethal injection at 11.05 p.m., at the Cummins Unit state prison, the last of eight inmates originally scheduled to be put to death this month.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson had put the temporary hold on Williams' execution on Thursday evening but the apex court denied all the motions, CNN reported.

Arkansas' supply of sedatives used in the lethal injection expires at the end of the month.

The state is facing a scarcity of lethal injection drugs as it struggles with suppliers that do not want their products used in executions.

Of the eight inmates scheduled to die, the courts had issued injunctions staying four of those executions for various reasons.

Ledell Lee was killed on April 20 and Jack Jones and Marcel Williams in a back-to-back execution on Monday night.

Jones and Marcel Williams were both executed for murders committed in the 1990s. Lee was convicted in 1995 of murdering a woman in her home two years earlier.

--IANS

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