Man convicted of raping and stabbing a 13-year-old girl was put to death in Texas, Thursday.
Tommy Lynn Sells, 49, was found guilty of killing Kaylene Harris and slashing her 10-year-old friend on New Year's Eve in 1999, at the Del Rio home of a man who did not pay him drug money, the court documents read. He was convicted in 2000.
Sells was administered a lethal dose of pentobarbital at a state prison in Huntsville and was declared dead at 6:27 p.m. CDT - 13 minutes later. He did not make any final statement.
A day earlier, federal appeals court rejected his petition to stay the death sentence after the defense lawyers sought information about the drugs to be used in the execution. Sells' attorneys said that by not naming the source of the lethal drugs, the court denied rights to their prisoners.
"Without transparency about lethal injections, particularly the source and purity of drugs to be used, it is impossible to ensure that executions are humane and constitutional," attorneys Maurie Levin and Jonathan Ross said in a statement, reports Reuters.
But Shawn Harris, the deceased's brother said that the punishment Sells received was in fact "pretty easy" compared to the 16 stabs and repeated neck slashing Harris was subjected to. "My sister didn't get the constitutional pain and suffering," said Shawn Harris, the victim's brother, reports the Associated Press.
According to the court documents, Sells broke in to the Del Rio home of the Harris family and sexually assaulted the girl as a pay off for the drug debt. He found Harris to be sleeping on a bunk bed and started abusing her, reports Reuters. After she woke up, he fatally stabbed and slit her throat.
Sells also attempted to kill a friend of Harris who was sleeping in the top bunk by slashing her. She then went to a neighbor's house for help after Sells left.
Sells claimed to be a serial killer who committed 70 murders throughout the U.S. since the age of 16.
According to the court documents, in 2003 he was charged for killing 13-year-old Stephanie Mahaney in Missouri but was not tried. He also pleaded guilty in the murder of 9-year-old Mary Bea Perez, who was strangled in Texas in 1999, reports AP. However, the prosecutors gave up the capital punishment in return for a plea.
Sells also confessed to killing an Illinois family in 1987 that included Ruby Dardeen, who was eight months pregnant. Due to the fatal beating she gave birth prematurely but the newborn was killed along with her 3-year-old sibling.
Sells became the 15th inmate to be executed in the U.S. and the fifth in Texas so far this year. The number of prisoners put to death rose to 513 since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976 has .
