This Article is From May 08, 2013

US executes drug dealer over turf war killing

A drug dealer convicted of gunning down a rival in Texas 10 years ago was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, US authorities said.

Carroll Parr, 35, was found guilty of shooting dead a fellow drug dealer outside a store in Texas in 2003. He was declared dead at 6:32 pm (1132 GMT) at Huntsville Prison, according to spokesman Jason Clark.

"I am in the midst of the truth," Parr said in his final words released by the prison. "These eyes will close, but they will be opened again, my understanding of God is, Jesus has got me through."

Parr was sentenced to death after a trial which heard how he had gunned down his 18-year-old victim after attempting to rob him of the proceeds of a drug transaction.

Nicknamed "Outlaw," Parr already had been convicted of several drug offenses prior to the killing and had also been linked to a December 2001 murder.

Several appeals to local and federal courts had failed, including a last-ditch bid to the Supreme Court.

In 2010, however, Parr had written to a federal judge requesting to be executed, to end his suffering and stop wasting taxpayers money, local media reported.

Parr was the 11th death row inmate to be executed in the United States in 2013, and the fifth from Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

He is the 497th inmate to be executed in Texas since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.

Meanwhile, another execution in the state of Mississippi was delayed on Tuesday after the prisoner scheduled to die, Willie Manning, obtained a reprieve from the state's Supreme Court.

The court found that forensic evidence against Manning was invalid.

"We have determined that the microscopic hair comparison analysis testimony or laboratory report presented in this case included additional statements that exceeded the limits of science and was, therefore, invalid," the Death Penalty Information Center reported.

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