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TEXAS (USA): FIRST EXECUTION WITH NEW DRUG
May 3, 2011: Cary Kerr, 46, white, was executed, becoming the state's 1st inmate put to death using a new 3-drug cocktail.
He was sentenced for the July 11, 2001 rape and murder of 34-year-old Pamela Horton.
Kerr's reaction to the chemicals was similar to most of the 466 inmates executed in Texas since 1982 under the previous drug combination.
He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. CDT, 9 minutes after the drugs began flowing into his arms. The 3-drug chemical cocktail in his lethal injection used the sedative pentobarbital instead of sodium thiopental. Texas recently switched from sodium thiopental, a drug it used since 1982, because it is no longer available. Pentobarbital already had been used for recent executions in Oklahoma and Ohio and survived legal challenges there.
Kerr becomes the 3rd condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas this year and the 467th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982.
Kerr becomes the 13th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1247th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (Sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin, 03/05/2011)
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