JARRATT, Va.  - A Virginia man sentenced to die for beating another man to death with a baseball bat in 1998 was executed by lethal injection on Thursday amid protests the execution amounted to state-assisted suicide.Thomas Wayne Akers, 31, who pleaded guilty to killing 24-year-old Wesley Smith during a robbery in Roanoke, in southwest Virginia, told a judge more than 10 years ago while in prison on an unrelated charge that he wanted to die in the electric chair. Akers was pronounced dead at 9:18 p.m. EST at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia, about 55 miles south of the state capital, Richmond.Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, paraphrased Akers' final statement that was almost inaudible to the witnesses. Traylor said Akers thanked Jesus Christ for coming into his life. He said Akers expressed sorrow and ``a lot of remorse'' and said he hoped the victims could forgive him, ``but if they couldn't, he knew the Lord had.''There were about 60 protesters -- many more than normal -- in a field just outside the prison.Death penalty opponents protested the Virginia execution and another scheduled to be carried out in Oklahoma on Thursday, which is International Death Penalty Abolition Day. That marks the day in 1847 that Michigan became the first English-speaking territory in the world to ban executions.``The fact that these two executions are scheduled to take place on International Death Penalty Abolition Day is symbolic of the contempt that the U.S. has for international opinion when it comes to justice and moral decency on the question of the death penalty,'' said Ajamu Baraka, acting director of Amnesty International USA's program to end executions.Akers and an accomplice, Timothy Dwayne Martin, beat Smith to death with an aluminum baseball bat during a robbery in December 1998. Akers was driving the victim's car and had his wallet in his possession when the two men were captured in New York, near the Canadian border.Martin later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.Akers ordered a last meal of pizza, french fries, and banana pudding. He was the first death row inmate executed this year in Virginia and the 82nd since a U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) ruling in 1976 allowing capital punishment to resume.As Akers was awaiting execution, prison officials were investigating the death of a fellow inmate on Virginia's death row in the Sussex State Prison. Convicted murderer David Overton, 21, collapsed in his cell at about 2 a.m. (0700 GMT) on Thursday and was later pronounced dead.Relatives said Overton, who had been on death row since November 1999, had become despondent and suicidal in recent days. Prison officials said the cause of death was under investigation.Overton was sentenced to die for a 1999 robbery and murder of a paraplegic stabbed to death in his bed.