A Texas man, described by his lawyers as mentally ill and incompetent for execution, has been put to death for killing a 12-year-old girl.
Jonathan Green, 44, received a lethal injection after the US Supreme Court rejected last-minute appeals to spare him.
A judge earlier this week stopped the punishment, but an appeals court overturned the reprieve.
Green used his final words to deny his guilt: "I'm an innocent man. I never killed anyone. Y'all are killing an innocent man."
He then looked down at his left arm, where one of the needles carrying the lethal drug was inserted, and said: "It's hurting me bad."
He fell unconscious soon after and was pronounced dead 18 minutes later.
Green was convicted of abducting, raping and strangling Christina Neal, whose body was found stuffed inside a laundry bag at his home in Dobbin in 2000.
Green claimed someone else had placed the body there and that he was set up.
His execution by lethal injection is the 10th this year in Texas, and the first of four scheduled for this month in the nation's most active death penalty state.
Supreme Court guidance says mental illness cannot disqualify someone from execution if they understand the sentence and reasons for the punishment.
Two years ago Green came within about four hours of execution before an appeal court stepped in amid similar arguments that he was too ill mentally to be put to death.
