HUNTSVILLE, Texas – The latest on the scheduled execution of Texas inmate Richard Masterson, who was convicted in a 2001 strangulation that he claimed was accidental (all times local):
5:50 p.m.
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to stop the execution of a Texas man for a killing 15 years ago that he claimed was accidental.
The high court rejected four appeals for 43-year-old Richard Masterson on Wednesday evening, less than an hour before he was to be taken to the death chamber.
Earlier in the day, Texas' top criminal court also refused to block the punishment, rejecting an appeal challenging a state law that keeps secret the name of the execution drug supplier.
Masterson was convicted of the January 2001 strangulation of 35-year-old Darin Honeycutt in Houston. Masterson has said the death happened accidentally during a chokehold that was part of a sex act. The two had met at a bar and then went to Honeycutt's apartment.
Honeycutt was an entertainer who performed dressed as a woman.
Court records showed Masterson confessed to police and acknowledged Honeycutt was slain on purpose in a letter to the Texas attorney general in 2012.
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