Darryl Durr, 46, was executed Tuesday in Ohio for the 1988 rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl after the Supreme Court rejected a flurry of final appeals, including one claiming he was allergic to certain anesthetics.
Durr was declared dead at 1036 am (1436 GMT) local time, 12 minutes after receiving a lethal injection.
The Supreme Court rejected three appeals filed by Durr's attorneys in the days before his execution.
One appeal called for DNA tests on a necklace belonging to the victim. Another argued that Ohio could not legally buy the anesthetic drugs used in the execution without a prescription.
The third claimed that Durr was allergic to certain anesthetics, raising the possibility that he would suffer before dying.
Durr, an African American, was 24 years old at the time of the rape and murder in January 1988 of a 16 year old girl, a friend of the mother of his baby.
The victim's body was found three months later hidden in a ditch, and Durr was identified as the killer eight months later by his girlfriend, who said he raped and strangled the teenager with a dog leash.
Durr's was the 13th execution in the United States this year and the fourth in Ohio, a Midwestern state that performs executions with an intravenous injection of a single powerful anesthetic drug.
Questions were raised about Ohio's methods in September 2009 when executioners failed to find a vein in a condemned prisoner, Romell Broom, and had to return him alive to his cell, the first time that has happened in the United States in more than 60 years.
Copyright 2010 AFP American Edition
