WASHINGTON (AFP) — A 36-year-old roofer convicted of beating a co-worker to death with a lamp while he slept was executed by lethal injection in Virginia overnight, officials said Friday.
Christopher Scott Emmett, who had been sentenced to death for the April 2001 murder of John Fenton Langley, 43, was executed at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia, said Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor.
He said Emmett was pronounced dead at 9:07 pm (0107 GMT) and "there were no complications."
In a statement, Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell described Langley's murder as a "senseless crime that took a father away from his children.
"Emmett murdered his co-worker as he lay sleeping in his hotel room in Danville (Virginia), taking John Fenton Langley's life in order to steal his wallet to buy crack cocaine," the attorney general said. "The just sentence of death delivered by the jury has now been carried out."
In his final words, Traylor quoted Emmett as saying: "Tell my family and friends I love them. Tell the governor he just lost my vote. You all hurry this along, I'm dying to get out of here."
Emmett was the 102nd person executed in Virginia since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
His execution had been scheduled for October of last year but was postponed as the Supreme Court examined the use of lethal injection as a means of execution.
The court ruled in April that lethal injection did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the US constitution.
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