Texas Breaks Own Execution Record

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - Texas broke its own U.S. record for executions in a year when it put to death on Tuesday a convicted killer who confessed to raping and murdering a 7-year-old girl. The lethal injection of Garry Miller, 33, gave Texas 38 executions this year, the most by any state since U.S. authorities began keeping death penalty records in 1930. The record was not expected to last long because two more executions were set this week at the state prison in Huntsville, which is 75 miles north of Houston. The old record of 37 was set by Texas in 1997. The state has now executed 237 people, the most in the nation, since resuming capital punishment in 1982, six years after the U.S. Supreme Court (news � web sites) lifted a national death penalty ban. Of those, 150 have been killed since Texas Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites), the Republican presidential candidate, took office in January 1995.

Miller was sentenced to die for the Nov. 11, 1988 murder of April Wilson, his girlfriend's 7-year-old cousin, near the west Texas town of Merkel. He raped the girl, then strangled and beat her to death and left her body in a field where it was found by quail hunters. Miller, a bartender and laborer with no prior criminal record, pleaded insanity, but a jury convicted him of capital murder and gave him the death penalty.

In his final statement as he lay strapped to a gurney in the Texas death chamber, Miller apologized to the girl's mother, Marjorie Howlett, who witnessed the execution. ``Maggie, I am sorry. I always wanted to tell you, but I just didn't know how. I have been praying for y'all. I hope that y'all find the peace that y'all have been wanting,'' he said. ``Lord, be merciful with those who are actively involved with the taking of my life. Forgive them as I am forgiving them,'' he said. ``All right warden, I am ready to go home.''

Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Larry Todd said Miller was friendly with guards and prison officials as the execution approached and wanted nothing to stop it. ``He told the warden he was ready to get on with it,'' Todd said. ``He said he's been on death row 12 years and that's long enough.''

For his last meal, Miller requested two grilled cheese sandwiches, french fries, two boiled eggs and two cinnamon rolls.

Daniel Hittle, 50, was scheduled to die on Wednesday and Claude Jones, 60, on Thursday in the state's final executions of the year.

Hittle got the death sentence for the 1989 shooting death of a Garland, Texas police officer, while Jones was condemned for killing a man during a liquor store holdup that same year.