A convicted double murderer from Florida was given the lethal injection Wednesday night; it was the third execution within 24 hours carried out in the United States
John Ruthell Henry, 63, was denied last-minute appeals for stay by the the U.S. Supreme Court. He was pronounced dead at 7:43 p.m. local time at the Florida State Prison in Starke. Henry was convicted of stabbing his estranged wife and her 5-year-old son from a previous marriage in December 1985. He repeatedly slit the boy's throat.
Earlier in the day, an attorney for Henry filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, for a stay on the execution saying that Henry was mentally challenged.
In his reply, Justice Anthony Kennedy said modern medical practice perceived an IQ score as an imprecise measurement. Moreover, the state's procedure of allowing someone with a score above 70 to be executed was too rigid, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Henry was the third inmate in the U.S. to be executed within a day. Georgia and Missouri put two convicted murderers to death. Georgia inmate Marcus A. Wellons, 59, was declared dead at 11:56 p.m. Tuesday night. He was convicted in 1993 of raping and killing India Roberts, 15, in Cobb County, outside Atlanta.
Within an hour of the Georgia execution, Missouri administered the lethal injection to 46-year-old John Winfield. He was declared dead at 12:01 a.m. local time Wednesday, the state Department of Public Safety said.
Winfield was found guilty of killing two women in 1996, friends of his former girlfriend. He also shot his girlfriend leaving her blind and disfigured.
All the three executions went without any complications.
These three executions were carried out within seven weeks of Oklahoma's botched execution that brought the lethal drugs use under the scanner. Clayton Lockett, a convicted rapist and murderer, was given a lethal dose of three untested combination of drugs. After the injection of the drugs Lockett was in intense pain for nearly 45 minutes. He died of a massive heart attack later.
Following the botched execution, Oklahoma granted a six-month stay on executions and ordered an investigation.
At least three other death sentence inmates from different states cited the failed Oklahoma execution to seek stays on their sentences. Of them two were granted stays. Another inmate from Pennsylvania, Richard Poplawski, has been given the death sentence. However, no date has been fixed for his execution.
Amid the questions over the use of lethal drugs, Tennessee reintroduced the electric chair as an alternative execution method. This made Tennessee the first U.S. state to bring back the electrocuting method for execution. Republican Gov. Bill Halsam signed a bill in May allowing the state to electrocute death row inmates if prison officials failed to get the required lethal drugs.
