Tennessee used its electric chair for the first time in 47 years today to execute a man who killed his three sons and their half-sister.
Daryl Holton (45), was pronounced dead at 0625 GMT at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after receiving two jolts of electricity, prison authorities said.
His attorney, David Raybun, said after the execution that Holton was now "free of the demons that haunted him."
When he was asked if he had any last words, Holton replied only "Yeah, I do," and said nothing further. He had eaten a last meal of riblets on a bun, vegetables, baked beans, cake and iced tea.
Holton had methodically killed his children and their half-sister in a Shelbyville, Tennessee, garage on November 30th, 1997, following a lengthy custody battle with his ex-wife.
Lined up on the promise of a Christmas surprise, the three youngsters, aged 4 to 12, were shot in the back with a rifle.
He told police he killed the children because his ex-wife had denied him from seeing them. He also said he intended to kill his ex-wife and himself, but instead decided to turn himself in.
Holton, who said in newspaper interviews he supported the death penalty, dropped earlier appeals and refused to fight his sentence, opting for electrocution rather than lethal injection.
Tennessee offers the electric chair as an option for those who committed their crimes before 1999, when lethal injection became the state's primary method of execution.
The chair was last used in Tennessee in 1960 to execute William Tines, who was condemned for rape.
Since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 there have been 1,097 executions. Holton was the fortieth person to be executed so far in 2007.