The state of Florida on Tuesday executed Richard Henyard, 34, for the 1993 murder of two young girls and the rape and shooting of their mother, a Department of Corrections official said.
Henyard, 34, was executed just after 8 pm (0800 Macau time yesterday) at Florida State Prison in the town of Raiford, in north Florida, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger.
Henyard and an accomplice, Alfonza Smalls, carjacked a vehicle owned by Dorothy Lewis at the parking lot of a supermarket in the town of Eustis, in central Florida, when she was shopping with her two daughters, ages three and seven, on January 30, 1993.
In 1994 Henyard was sentenced to die for the murder of the two girls, and to life in prison for the rape and attempted murder of Lewis, their mother, whom he shot several times but survived.
Smalls, who was 14 years old at the time, was too young to be sentenced to die but instead was sentenced to life in prison.
Henyard spent years in vain attempting multiple legal recourses to avoid execution, including in July, when his lawyers argued that Florida's application of lethal injections amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment," which is banned by the US constitution.