Texas is one of the states in the"Death Belt" - the southern states that together account for over 90% of all executions carried out since 1976. These states overlap considerably with the southern states that had the highest incidence of extra-legal violence and killings during the Jim Crow era. [MORE] and [MORE]

From [HERE] Texas has executed Willie Trottie after the US supreme courts rejected last-minute appeals against the convicted double murderer being put to death by lethal injection.

The death sentence against Trottie, who shot dead his former common-law wife and her brother more than two decades ago in Houston, was carried out on Wednesday evening. He had contended he had poor legal help at his trial and questioned the potency of the execution drug.

Trottie repeatedly expressed love to witnesses – both people he selected and relatives of his victims, Barbara and Titus Canada – and several times asked for forgiveness as he was about to be executed. “I love you all,” he said. “I’m going home, going to be with the Lord … Find it in your hearts to forgive me. I’m sorry.”

Trottie, 45, was pronounced dead at 6.35pm, 22 minutes after the injection began. His was the eighth lethal injection this year in Texas and the first in the nation’s most active death penalty state since recent executions went awry in Oklahoma and Arizona. Unlike those states, where a drug combination is used for capital punishment, Texas uses a single lethal dose of pentobarbital.

He became the second death row inmate executed in the US on Wednesday. Earl Ringo Jr received a lethal injection just after midnight in Missouri for a 1998 robbery and double murder.