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Texas inmate is executed by lethal injection after mouthing 'I'm sorry' to relatives of one of the men he murdered

11:30, Thursday, 12 January, 2017
Texas inmate is executed by lethal injection after mouthing 'I'm sorry' to relatives of one of the men he murdered

A death row inmate in Texas has been executed 11 years after he killed two of his friends after one of them mocked him for falling for a fake drug deal.
     Christopher Wilkins, 48, died by lethal injection on Wednesday night in what was the first execution of 2017 in the United States.
     He was declared dead at 6.29 p.m - 13 minutes after he was given the lethal injection of pentobarbital.

Wilkins mouthed the words 'I'm sorry' to two relatives of one of his victims who were watching through a window before the lethal drug was administered, the Star Telegram reports.
     The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said Wilkins did not give a final statement before he died.
     Attorneys for Wilkins had earlier filed an appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court asking for his execution to be halted but it was declined on Wednesday.
     The decision came three hours before Wilkins was scheduled to be executed.
     Wilkins explained to jurors at his capital murder trial in 2008 how and why he killed his friends in Fort Worth three years earlier, saying he didn't care if they sentenced him to death.
     'Look, it is no big deal,' Wilkins calmly said from the witness stand.
     'I think subconsciously, I've been trying to kill myself or get myself killed since I was probably 12 or 13 years old,' he added, according to NBC News.
     His defense team had tried to argue that he had poor legal representation at trial and during earlier appeals and that the courts improperly refused to authorize money for a more thorough investigation of those claims to support other appeals and a clemency petition.
     Wilkins was released from prison in 2005 after serving time for a federal gun possession conviction. He drove a stolen truck to Fort Worth, where he befriended Willie Freeman, 40, and Mike Silva, 33.

Court records show Freeman and his drug supplier, who wasn't identified, duped Wilkins into paying $20 for a piece of gravel that he thought was a rock of crack cocaine.
     Wilkins said he shot Freeman on October 28, 2005, after Freeman laughed about the scam, then he shot Silva because he was there.
     Wilkins' fingerprints were found in Silva's wrecked SUV and a pentagram matching one of Wilkins' numerous tattoos had been carved into the hood.

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