The US: A GEORGIA man has become the first inmate put to death since the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of executions by lethal injection.
Convicted killer William Earl Lynd was pronounced dead at 7:51pm local time, a state prisons official said.
Lynd (53) was convicted of kidnapping and shooting his 26-year-old girlfriend, Ginger Moore, two days before Christmas in 1988.
The Supreme Court last month upheld the legality of lethal injections, and Georgia was the first state to carry one out.
Lynd was sentenced to die for kidnapping and shooting his girlfriend three times in the face and head two decades ago.
After burying her body in a shallow grave he fled to Ohio, where he shot and killed another woman who had stopped along the side of the road to help him.
Lynd has never denied killing Moore two days before Christmas in 1988.
But his lawyers had sought a last minute reprieve from the courts, arguing that new forensic medical evidence showed she was already dead when he stuffed her in the trunk of her car.
Prosecutors alleged that Moore was still alive when Lynd placed her in the trunk.
They said Lynd confessed to authorities that he had fired the final, lethal shot when he heard her "thumping around" in the trunk.
The kidnapping had been an essential "aggravating" circumstance that made Lynd eligible for the death penalty. - (AP)