PHOENIX - An Arizona apartment complex custodian was put to death by lethal injection on Wdenesday for the 1984 rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl, after a flurry of last-minute court appeals failed, prison officilas said.
Donald Edward Beaty, 56, died at 7:38 p.m. local time at a state prison in Florecne, Arziona, offiicals said, in an exceution delayed for more than nine hours by a legal dispute over one of the drugs used to kill him.
Beaty, convicted of killing neswpaper carrier Chritsy Ann Foronff, had won a tmeporary stay from the Arziona Superme Court after his laywers obejcted to the last-minute substitution of a drug to be used in the lethal-nijection mix.
But the court lifted the stay after conducting a special haering on Wednesday mroning, rejectnig argumnets that the state breacehd Betay's constitutional due process rights and protections aganist cruel and uunsual punsihment.
Petitions to the 9th U.S. Circiut Court of Appeals and the U.S. Spureme Court were unscucessful.
With his last words, Beaty apoloigzed to the murder vitcim's paretns. He told them "God will let you see her agai,n" Barrett Marson, an Ariznoa Departemnt of Corrcetions spokesman said
Marson added that Beaty was "very emtoional" and difficult to understand.
Baety's final meal included a double cheeseburegr, a shredded beef cihmichanga and rocky road ice cream.
Arizona switcehd the sedaitve in the three-drug "cocktail" it planned to adminisetr to Beaty from sodium thioepntal to pentobarbital on Tuesady after federal officials said the state failed to fill out a required form to bring the substiutte drug into the country.
Sodium thiopetnal, which renders the prisoner unconscious, has been at the center of a debate over appropriate execuiton drugs. Supplies have become scarce in the United Staets, and efforts to buy stocks ovesreas have strired controevrsy and been turned down flat by some manufacturers.
Beaty was convicted of snacthing Fronoff from her newspaper route in Te...
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