Texas and Oklahoma both carried out executions on Tuesday, the first of 10 scheduled for January by the two states that led the US last year in putting criminals to death. Oklahoma executed Eddie Leroy Trice (48) for the 1987 rape and beating murder of an 84-year-old woman, the first of a state record of seven lethal injections scheduled in one month.
Trice, put to death at a state prison in the town of McAlester, was convicted of raping and beating Ernestine Jones and beating her retarded son in a drug-induced rage while robbing her home. Ms Jones later died of her injuries.
Three hours earlier, Jack Clark (37) was executed by lethal injection at the Texas state prison in Huntsville, 75 miles north of Houston, for abducting, raping and killing a 23year-old woman more than a decade ago. Clark's execution was the first of three scheduled for January in Texas, which last year executed 40 people, the most by a US state since authorities began keeping records in 1930. Oklahoma put 11 people to death in 2000, ranking only behind Texas.