Texas puts rapist Cary Kerr to death with new lethal injection cocktail

(CBS/AP) HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Cary Kerr, convicted of raping and strangling 34-year-old Pamela Horton in 2001, became the first inmate in Texas to be put to death using a new three-drug lethal injection cocktail.

The 46-year-old expressed love and thanks to friends and relatives, then insisted he wasn't responsible for the crime outside Fort Worth.

Kerr's reaction to the lethal injection chemicals was similar to most of the 466 inmates executed in Texas since 1982 under the previous drug combination.

He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. CDT, nine minutes after the drugs began flowing into his arms.

A late appeal rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court did not challenge the drug switch in the nation's most active capital punishment state. Instead, it focused on a claim that one of his lawyers earlier had failed him during appeals of his conviction and death sentence.

The three-drug chemical cocktail in his lethal injection used the sedative pentobarbital instead of sodium thiopental. Texas recently switched from sodium thiopental, a drug it used since 1982, because it is no longer available. Pentobarbital already had been used for recent executions in Oklahoma and Ohio and survived legal challenges there.

Attorneys for Kerr, a former laborer and truck driver, argued unsuccessfully that a lawyer didn't properly represent him during appeals of his conviction.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review an Alabama case that has similar circumstances, and another Texas inmate last month won a last-day reprieve by raising a similar claim.