Texas executes man for strangling transvestite

By: 9 years ago

This undated photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows condemned Texas inmate Richard Masterson. Masterson doesnt deny being at a Houston apartment where a female impersonator was asphyxiated while he and the victim were having sex but insists the death 15 years ago was an accident. On Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, Masterson is set for execution for the slaying of Darin Shane Honeycutt. Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP

WASHINGTON, United States—Texas executed Wednesday a man who killed a transvestite during a sex game, prison officials said, in a case which drew the attention of Pope Francis.

Richard Masterson, 43, who failed in a desperate last-ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court, received a lethal injection and died at 6:53 p.m. (0053 GMT), a spokesman for the local prison adminstration told AFP.

He is the second person executed in the United States this year.

Masterson was convicted of strangling to death Darin Honeycutt in 2001 in Houston.

Masterson admitted strangling Honeycutt but said that it was an accident and that the victim died of a heart attack during consensual sexual relations.

According to Masterson, Honeycutt had asked him to be choked to reach a state of erotic asphyxiation, a practice that deprives the brain of oxygen to reach a more intense orgasm.

Pope Francis, a death penalty opponent, had been closely following the case, said Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn at a press conference Monday.

Twenty-eight people were executed in the United States in 2015, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center.