The state of Missouri has executed a man who was first sentenced to death 22 years ago for murdering a teenager.
Jeffrey Ferguson was convicted in 1992 of the 1989 kidnap, rape and killing of a 17-year-old girl in St Louis, but his conviction was then overturned because of problems with the trial.
He was later convicted again and put back on death row.
Ferguson received a lethal injection just after midnight on Wednesday and was pronounced dead about ten minutes later.
Reporters at the prison said he mouthed words, made funny faces and seemed to smile at a group of friends and family just as the drugs started to work.
He had been covered from neck to toe with a white sheet and strapped to a bed.
Under the sheet, his legs made a flurry of kicking movements as the drugs took hold but he appeared to slip into unconsciousness relatively quickly, a Reuters reporter said.
He took only a few shallow breaths before becoming still. Two young women in the family witness room were seen in tears.
The execution, at Bonne Terre State Prison, is Missouri's fifth this year so far.
Ferguson abducted Kelli Hall as she finished her shift at a Mobil gas station in St Charles, on the edge of St Louis, on February 9, 1989.
Her naked, frozen body was found 13 days later on a St Louis farm. An autopsy found she had been raped and strangled.
In an attempt to spare his life, Ferguson's attorneys had made last-minute court appeals challenging, among other things, the state's refusal to disclose where it had obtained the drug it used to carry out its executions.
Ferguson, who expressed remorse for the crime, became deeply religious in prison, counselled inmates and helped start a prison hospice program.
His attorney said Ferguson was an alcoholic who blacked out the night of the murder.
But the US Supreme Court, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals and the governor all refused to halt the execution.
Afterwards, Kelli's father Jim Hall told a news conference: "It's been a very long 25 years waiting for this execution, way too long. My family and I have been devastated for years over this."
The debate over the death sentence has been revived in the last few years, primarily as many of the companies that supplied the drugs are now refusing to do so.
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