Texas executes 500th convict, bucks nationwide trend

Texas has executed its 500th convict since reinstating the death penalty in 1982, becoming the US state with the most instances of capital punishment, despite a general decline in the practice across the country.
Kimberley McCarthy, a cocaine-addicted home health care worker was convicted of robbing and killing a 71-year-old Dallas woman, Dorothy Booth.
As a few dozen protesters gathered outside the prison in Huntsville, McCarthy, 52, was put to death by lethal injection yesterday, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, making her one of a small number of women to have been executed.
McCarthy was the fourth woman executed since Texas adopted the practice of lethal injection in 1982.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals cleared the way for the execution, refusing for the second time in two days McCarthy's request that it consider alleged irregularities in the seating of her jury.
McCarthy claimed Dallas prosecutors exhibited racial bias in eliminating three African-Americans from the jury panel. Only one juror in McCarthy's trial was black. McCarthy was African-American.

McCarthy was convicted of fatally stabbing her neighbour, retired university professor Dorothy Booth, in July 1997.
Prosecutors argued the killing was prompted by a robbery, in which McCarthy severed her victim's finger in order to steal a ring. The ring and other items taken from the home then were converted to cash for drug purchases.

During her trial's punishment phase, prosecutors revealed that McCarthy had robbed and murdered two other women, both of them in their 80s.
Additionally, she had convictions for forgery, theft of services and prostitution.
McCarthy's attorney, Maurie Levin of the University of Texas Capital Punishment Clinic, said the conviction came as a result of "discrimination and racial bias and inadequate counsel appointed by the state.
Many US states have imposed a moratorium on the death penalty, with few executions carried out and convicts on death row.
A total of 1,336 people have been executed across the United States since the Supreme Court lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in 1976 and over a third of the executions were carried out in Texas.