Texas carried its first execution of 2013 Thursday in Huntsville, putting Carl Henry Blue to death for setting his then-girlfriend on fire almost 20 years ago.
Blue died by lethal injection just before 7 p.m. at the Huntsville State Prison. He was convicted of killing Carmen Richards-Sander in 1994, dousing her with gasoline then setting her on fire. She died 19 years later.
In Georgia, Andrew Allen Cook was executed, convicted of fatally shooting two university students in 1995. Terrella Richards, 41, watched her mother's killer die, telling reporters that she now will move on with her life. Texas has executed almost 500 people since 1976, the year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty as constitutional - far exceeding any other state.
In Georgia, Allen was executed after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his last-minute appeal.
Cook's lawyers argued the state's method of lethal injection violated state and federal law. The execution was delayed by four hours as the U.S. high court considered the appeal. Cook was convicted of killing Mercer University students Michele Lee Cartagena, 19, and Grant Patrick Hendrickson, 22, , according to court records.
"The murders were completely random," court records said. "Cook did not know the victims, and there was no interaction between Cook and the victims before he killed them."
After Cook became a suspect, investigators enlisted the help of his father, who is a veteran FBI agent, to help track him down. Cook admitted the killings to his father, testifying against his son at trial.
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