HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - The Latest on the scheduled execution of a Texas inmate who confessed to numerous killings and rapes (all times local):
6:40 p.m.
A 66-year-old Texas prisoner accused of four killings and at least nine rapes has been executed for a 1979 rape and murder in Houston that went unsolved for two decades until he confessed.
Danny Paul Bible received lethal injection Wednesday evening for the death of 20-year-old Inez Deaton, whose body was found on the banks of a Houston bayou.
Bible’s attorneys had argued to the courts that his multiple health issues made it likely his punishment would be botched and cause him unconstitutional pain. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-day appeal about an hour before he was put to death.
There were no apparent complications during the execution Wednesday.
Bible’s guilt was not disputed, but his lawyers had proposed he be rolled in his wheelchair in front of a firing squad or be administered nitrogen gas to cut off oxygen to his brain. State attorneys said neither of those alternatives was possible or legal.
The execution was the seventh this year in Texas, the country’s most active death penalty state.
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5:35 p.m.
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to stop the scheduled execution of a convicted Texas killer whose lawyers argued he’s too sick for lethal injection.
The high court, without comment, rejected a lawsuit from attorneys for 66-year-old Danny Paul Bible that contended he would be subjected to unconstitutionally cruel punishment if prison officials tried to insert IV needles for his lethal injection because he’s suffering from a multitude of illnesses.
Bible is set to die Wednesday evening for the rape and murder of 20-year-old Inez Deaton nearly 40 years ago.
Texas prison officials have described Bible as quiet in a holding cell a few feet from the death chamber in the hours before his scheduled punishment. A prison timeline documenting his activities Wednesday said Bible was “walking around” his death row cell at 5:45 a.m., hours before his midday transfer to the prison in Huntsville where executions are carried out, and spent the morning visiting with friends and family.
In their appeals, his attorneys said Bible used a wheelchair.
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11:20 a.m.
A Texas death row inmate who confessed to four slayings and at least nine rapes is waiting to see whether the U.S. Supreme Court will halt his execution.
Danny Paul Bible is scheduled for lethal injection Wednesday evening for killing a woman in Houston nearly 40 years ago.
His lawyers are trying to stop the execution, arguing that he has serious health issues and that a lethal injection would amount to “an intolerably cruel method of execution as applied to him.” The attorneys say technicians won’t be able to properly insert IVs to carry the lethal drugs.
They’re proposing a firing squad or nitrogen gas as the means of execution. Neither method is available in Texas.
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12:30 a.m.
A 66-year-old Texas death row inmate who confessed to four slayings and at least nine rapes is set for lethal injection amid his lawyers’ concerns that multiple health issues make it likely his execution will be botched and cause him unconstitutional pain.
Danny Paul Bible was condemned for killing a woman in Houston nearly 40 years ago. Twenty-year-old Inez Deaton was stabbed with an ice pick, raped and left on the bank of a bayou.
Bible’s lawyers say his health problems will prevent Texas prison technicians from inserting an IV for the lethal drugs. They’re proposing a firing squad or nitrogen gas as means of execution, but Texas law only allows lethal injection.
Bible’s attorneys are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt Wednesday evening’s scheduled lethal injection.
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