Texas executes Larry Wooten

Larry Wooten

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A northeast Texas man was executed tonight over the 1996 slayings of an elderly Paris couple during a robbery.

Larry Wooten, 51, was condemned for killing 80-year-old Grady Alexander and his 86-year-old wife, Bessie.

The Alexanders were beaten with a cast iron skillet and a pistol, stabbed and had their throats slit.

Prosecutors say Wooten robbed the couple, taking $500, so he could buy cocaine.

Wooten said he didn't kill the couple, for whom he formerly worked doing odd jobs. He claimed he went to their home in Paris, found the bodies and fled. Wooten had at one time been married to the couple's niece.

DNA evidence, including blood found on the kitchen floor of the Alexander home, matched Wooten. A pair of Wooten's pants with Grady Alexander's blood were found near an area where Wooten had bought drugs around the time of the murders.

"I don't want to be executed. But Texas is going to do what they're going to do," Wooten said in an interview last month.

Wooten's attorneys said his appeals were exhausted.

The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month refused to consider Wooten's appeal. In his appeal, Wooten's attorneys argued he wouldn't have turned down a plea bargain if he knew about additional DNA evidence that didn't become available until after his trial began.

Wooten turned down a plea agreement of life in prison after DNA experts working for his trial attorneys believed the blood evidence didn't reliably connect him to the crime. But after the trial began, additional lab results showed the DNA evidence was stronger than originally thought.

Kerye Ashmore, a former Lamar County district attorney who prosecuted the case, called Wooten a "scary guy" with a history of violence, including a prior conviction for assaulting an elderly woman after breaking into her home. He also was a person of interest in the slaying of another elderly woman in Paris who was killed a couple of weeks before the Alexanders, Ashmore said.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Tuesday refused to commute his death sentence to life in prison.

During his brief final statement, Wooten, 51, did not mention the Alexanders.

"I don't have nothing to say. You can go ahead and send me home to my heavenly father," Wooten said.

He cried as the drugs were administered and let out one final gasp as the lethal injection took effect. 9 minutes later, at 6:21 p.m. CDT, he was pronounced dead.

No family members of the Alexanders attended the execution. Wooten's 2 sisters, who witnessed the execution, cried and prayed. Between 10 to 15 anti-death penalty protesters stood about a block away outside the prison that the execution chamber is housed in, with one woman using a bullhorn to say, "The state of Texas has committed another murder."

Wooten becomes the 17th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 464th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on Dec. 7, 1982. Wooten becomes the the 225th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since Rick Perry became governor in 2001.

Wooten becomes the 43rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1231st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

The next execution in Texas is scheduled for Dec. 1, when Steven Staley is set to die for the 1989 slaying of a Fort Worth restaurant manager during a robbery.

Sources: AP, Rick Halperin, October 21, 2010