A Texas man put to death Wednesday for a killing 15 years ago became
the busy death penalty state's first prisoner executed in 2016.
Richard Masterson, 43, was pronounced dead at 6:53 p.m., 25 minutes after the lethal injection began.
"I'm all right with this," he said. "Sometimes you have to live and
die by the choices you make. I made mine and I'm paying for it."
He said he was being sent "to a better place."
He mouthed a kiss to relatives and friends who were
watching the execution through a window and told them he loved them. As
the pentobarbital took effect, he began snoring. After about a dozen
snores, he stopped moving.
Masterson had claimed the January 2001
strangulation of Darin Shane Honeycutt was accidental and had several
appeals before the courts, including four with the U.S. Supreme Court.
His last-day efforts to stop his execution were rejected.
,,,
Honeycutt was an entertainer who performed dressed as a woman. Honeycutt's stage name was Brandi Houston.
No family members or friends of Honeycutt witnessed Masterson being executed.
Court
records showed Masterson confessed to police, told others about the
killing and acknowledged Honeycutt was slain on purpose in a letter to
the Texas attorney general in 2012.
"I meant to kill him,"
Masterson wrote to then-Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is now the
state's governor. "It was no accident."
Texas executes its first prisoner of 2016: 'I'm all right with this' - Chicago Tribune
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