Texas prison officials executed an inmate by lethal injection Wednesday evening for strangling a woman who was running near her Houston home nearly 30 years ago.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused a last minute effort to save the life of Arthur Lee Burton.
He was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m CDT, Texas prison officials said.
"Yes. I want to say thank you to all the people who support me and pray for me. For those of you I know and do not know thank you for your support and prayers. 27,27 and a full circle to all the guys at the Polunsky Unit, I love you guys," Burton said in his final words.
"Bird, Bird is going home. To all the people I have hurt and caused pain, I wish we didn't have to be here at this moment, but I want you to know that I am sorry for putting y'all through this and my family. I'm not better than anyone, I hope that I find peace and y'all can too. Warden I am good."
Nancy Adleman, a mother of three, was strangled with her own shoelaces in a wooded area off of a jogging trail in 1997.
Burton had confessed to the killing but his defense claimed he was intellectually disabled. A 2002 high court rulling barred the execution of people deemed to have such a disability but the high court did not step in to stop the execution.
He was the third inmate executed in Texas this year.
Burton was 54.
