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 executed by lethal injection at the state prison and was pronounced dead at 12:11 a.m. 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 Lake St. Louis condominium.
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, and the secrecy involving the drugs used in Missouri.