A 45-year-old condemned man, struggling and yelling "please God, help me," had to be carried into an Ohio execution chamber by six guards before being put to death today for the 1983 murder of an elderly woman, prison officials said.
Lewis Williams, Jr., was given a lethal injection at 10.15 a.m. (US local time) at the prison in Lucasville, Ohio, for killing Leoma Chmielewski (76).
"Please God, help me. God, please help. Please hear my cry," Williams shouted as he was strapped onto a gurney to receive the lethal injection, prison spokeswoman Mr Andrew Dean said.
His mother, Ms Bonnie Williams, witnessed her son's struggle and was taken out in a wheelchair afterward.
Throughout his two decades on death row, Williams claimed innocence, arguing prosecutors used trumped-up evidence and coerced witnesses, including testimony from two inmates who testified he confessed while in jail awaiting trial.
Williams had lived across the street from Chmielewski, and claimed he had left the victim's house before she was killed.
His scheduled June 2002 execution was stayed by a judge to evaluate whether Williams was retarded, which would have commuted his death sentence. Experts hired by his attorneys determined he was not retarded and Williams fired his lawyers.
The US Supreme Court turned down his final appeal arguing execution by lethal injection amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and was therefore unconstitutional.
Several death row inmates have lodged appeals based on disputed evidence that the lethal cocktail of drugs immobilizes the condemned but does not spare suffering. A federal appeals court recently stayed the execution of a Virginia inmate on those grounds.
Williams was the fifth person to be executed this year in the United States, and the 890th since the nation resumed the death penalty in 1976.
For his final meal, Williams chose the prison's regular dinner of smoked sausage, rice, black-eyed peas, collard greens and vanilla pudding.