Washington State carried out its first execution in three years today.
Shortly before 5 a.m. Irish time, James Elledge - who admitted stabbing and strangling 47-year-old neighbour Eloise Fitzner - was strapped to a metal trolley at a state prison in Walla Walla and injected with lethal chemicals.
The 58-year-old asked for the death penalty after murdering Ms Fitzner in the church where he worked as a janitor three years ago.
Elledge was the fourth person executed in Washington state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1981.
He made several phone calls during an extra hour in the exercise yard but made no final statement. He spent his last several hours in a holding cell and met with his lawyer before dying, officials said.
After a legally mandated review last month, the Washington State supreme court affirmed Elledge's death sentence. Governor Gary Locke earlier this month rejected a clemency bid by death penalty opponents.
At the time of the Lynnwood murder in 1998, Elledge had been on parole for three years after serving part of a sentence for killing a woman who managed a Seattle motel in 1974.