This April 4, 2007 file photo provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections shows Michael Worthington who is scheduled to die for killing a female neighbor in 1995. His execution would be the first since Joseph Rudolph Wood gasped for air in July, 2014, in Arizona during a lethal injection process that took nearly two hours to complete. AP/Missouri Department of Corrections
BONNE TERRE, Missouri — A Missouri inmate has been put to death for raping and killing a neighbor in 1995, the first lethal injection in the U.S. since an execution in Arizona went awry last month.
The Missouri Department of Corrections said early Wednesday that Michael Worthington was pronounced dead shortly after midnight. He is the seventh Missouri inmate executed this year.
He had been sentenced to death for the 1995 attack on Melinda “Mindy” Griffin during a burglary of her home.
The U.S. Supreme Court and Missouri’s governor declined to block the execution.
Worthington’s attorneys had cited the Arizona execution and two others that were botched in Ohio and Oklahoma, along with the secrecy surrounding the lethal injection drugs used in Missouri.
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