HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man condemned for a robbery in which three people were shot, one fatally, apologized to a woman who survived the 2002 attack and family members of the slain man before receiving a lethal injection Thursday.
Beunka Adams said he was a stupid kid in a man’s body at the time of the crime, which started at a convenience store southeast of Dallas and ended in a remote area several miles away.
“Everything that happened that night was wrong,” Adams, 29, said, as he stared at the death chamber ceiling, never looking at the people who gathered to watch his final moments. “If I could take it back, I would. … I messed up and can’t take that back.”
His death was carried out less than three hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-day appeal to postpone the execution, the fifth this year in Texas.
Adams’ attorneys had asked the nation’s highest court to halt the lethal injection, review his case and let him pursue appeals claiming he had deficient legal help at his trial and during earlier stages of his appeals.
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