Oklahoma carries out the 25th and final US execution this year
Kevin Ray Underwood, who turned 45 on Thursday, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, prison officials said.
The execution process began at 10:04 am Central Time (1604 GMT) and Underwood was pronounced dead 10 minutes later, the statement said.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 2024 was the 10th consecutive year where fewer than 30 people were executed in the United States.
Underwood, a former grocery store clerk, was convicted of the 2006 sexual assault and murder of Jamie Rose Bolin, the daughter of neighbors in the town of Purcell, south of Oklahoma City.
Bolin was beaten with a wooden kitchen cutting board and then suffocated.
Underwood confessed to the murder and expressed regret during a clemency hearing on Friday before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board.
"I recognize that although I do not want to die, I recognize that I deserve to for what I did," he said. "I would like to apologize to the victim's family and to my own family."
The board denied clemency by a 3-0 vote.
There have been 25 executions of convicted murderers in the United States this year. Three used the controversial method of nitrogen gas while the rest relied on lethal injection.
On Wednesday, the midwestern state of Indiana carried out its first execution in 15 years.
Joseph Corcoran, 49, who was convicted of murdering his brother and three other men, was put to death by lethal injection at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.
Indiana paused executions in 2009 because it was unable to obtain the necessary drugs from pharmaceutical companies reluctant to be associated with capital punishment.
Executions were carried out in nine states this year -- six in Alabama, five in Texas, four in Missouri, four in Oklahoma, two in South Carolina and one each in Florida, Georgia, Indiana and Utah.
53% favor death penalty
According to an October Gallup poll, 53 percent of Americans are in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder. Forty-three percent are opposed while four percent have no opinion.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while six others -- Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee -- have moratoriums in place.
President Joe Biden is facing growing calls to commute the death sentences of the 40 federal inmates on Death Row before he leaves office.
Donald Trump resumed federal executions during his first term in the White House, overseeing 13 by lethal injection during his final six months in power, more than any US leader in 120 years.
Biden's Justice Department issued a moratorium on the use of the death penalty at the federal level after he became president.
There are several high-profile inmates on federal Death Row.
They include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, sentenced to death for the murders of two people in the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon, Dylann Roof, 30, who shot dead nine Black parishoners in a South Carolina church, and Robert Bowers, 52, who killed 11 Jewish worshippers in a 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.