WASHINGTON, Cedric Ransom, 29 anni, che, il 14 febbraio 1997, uccise un venditore di armi, per poi impadronirsi della sua merce, e' stato messo a morte, mercoledi' sera, nel carcere di Huntsville, in Texas.

Il delitto per cui venne condannato e' solo uno dei quattro che gli sono attribuiti, nell'arco di 17 giorni.

Ransom e' stato la 19.a persona messa a morte quest'anno in Texas e la 308.a da quando le esecuzioni sono riprese nello Stato, dopo una moratoria federale, nel 1982.

Durante il processo,Ransom aggredi' il pubblico ministero e il suo stesso avvocato. Al momento dell'esecuzione, e' invece parso calmo, ringraziando il suo consigliere spirituale per il distacco acquisito.

TEXAS - Inmate who attacked his own lawyers executed

A Fort Worth man who attacked one of his own attorneys and a prosecutor during his capital murder trial was executed this evening for robbing and fatally shooting a gun dealer, 1 of 4 slayings authorities linked him to during a 17-day spree in 1991.

In a brief final statement, Cedric Ransom, 29, thanked a friend and spiritual adviser who were present to watch him die.

"You have been beautiful to me. Without you in my life, I would not have been able to make it like this. Probably I would have put up a good fight. You have calmed me," he said.

Ransom told them he loved them. As the lethal drugs began taking effect, he told them "I'll be OK." He gasped a couple of times, exhaled and stopped breathing. 9 minutes later, at 6:21 p.m., he was pronounced dead.

"He was a bad guy," said Richard Bland, one of the Tarrant County prosecutors who tried Ransom's case.

Besides the Dec. 7, 1991, slaying of optometrist and part-time gun dealer Herbert Primm, Bland said Ransom was involved in 3 fatal robberies of convenience stores.

"Most people go to an ATM to get cash," Bland said. "He'd go to convenience stores and not leave any witnesses."

In late appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ransom contended he was mentally retarded and should be ineligible for execution under a high court ruling in another case last year. About an hour before his scheduled punishment, the high court rejected the appeals.

At the conclusion of jury selection during his trial, Ransom used a smuggled 5 1/2-inch piece of broken glass hidden in his hand to try to stab one of his attorneys in the back. Ignoring orders from a bailiff to back off, Ransom turned his attention to a nearby prosecutor.

"He was coming at me and his words were very clear: 'I'm going to kill you! I'm going to kill you!'" recalled Bob Gill, now a state district judge in Tarrant County. "He got to me and the fight was on. He and I went down. I knew what was in his hand and I grabbed that arm with both my hands."

Neither Gill nor the defense attorney, Chris Phillips, was seriously hurt in the November 1992 attack, but both were removed from the case.

Ransom went on to trial and was convicted of capital murder for gunning down Primm, 47, outside Primm's Arlington home. Ransom was 18 at the time.

Gill wound up being a witness to help show how Ransom was a continuing threat, one of the questions jurors had to answer when determining a death sentence.

Ransom's death sentence was overturned in 1994 when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled his trial judge improperly excluded a potential juror. Prosecutors returned him to court in 1997 for another sentencing trial where, against his lawyers' advice, he took the stand, denied he was guilty of the Primm slaying but confessed to multiple convenience store murders.

The 2nd jury also sentenced him to death.

Testimony showed Ransom, a ninth-grade dropout, and three companions went to Primm's house to look at some guns. Primm, who held a federal firearms license, opened the trunk of his car and the four pulled out their own weapons. According to testimony, Primm told the gun thieves to "just take them" but Ransom bent him over the hood of the car and then shot Primm once in the head with a .44-caliber pistol. He was arrested 3 days later.

While locked up in Fort Worth, records showed he attacked a jailer. And while on death row outside Huntsville in 1997, he and a second condemned inmate used a hacksaw blade to cut through a fence and were on their way to escaping when they were spotted by a guard.

"There is no question at all," Gill said. "This is one of the more dangerous guys I've come across in 20 years in the criminal courts."

Ransom's 3 companions in the Primm slaying also are in prison, serving terms of at least 20 years.

"We had a couple of the co-defendants to testify against him," Gill said. "We had information that connected him to the operation before hand and connected him to the murder weapon. One or more of the guns stolen from the victim were found at his residence.

"It turned out all right. He got what I feel he deserved."

On Thursday evening, Allen Wayne Janecka faces lethal injection for being the hit man in a murder-for-hire plot that left 4 members of a Houston family dead. Among the victims was 14-month-old Kevin Wanstrath, who was fatally shot in his crib in 1979.

Ransom becomes the 19th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas, and the 308th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982. Ransom becomes the 69th condemned inmate to be put to death since Rick Perry became Governor of Texas in 2001.

Ransom also becomes the 47th condemned inmate to be put to death in the USA this year, and the 867th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977. Ransom's execution is also the 700th to be carried out nationally via lethal injection.