US carries out third and fourth executions of week

 Two US states executed convicted murderers on Thursday, the third and fourth death sentences carried out in the country this week.

In Oklahoma, a man convicted of killing a woman during a home robbery was put to death. And in Florida, another man was executed for the rape and murder of a child and the killing of her grandmother.

Wendell Grissom, 56, was sentenced to death in Oklahoma for the 2005 murder of Amber Matthews, 23, who was shot in the head while trying to protect a friend’s two young daughters.

Grissom was pronounced dead 10 minutes after the execution process began at the state penitentiary in McAlester, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections said in a statement.

It said the execution was carried out using a three-drug protocol: Midazolam, which causes sedation, Vecuronium Bromide, which halts respiration, and Potassium Chloride, which stops the heart.

Dreu Kopf, who was wounded in a 2005 home invasion robbery, speaks to reporters, with her daughters, Gracie, left, and Rylee, after witnessing the execution of Wendell Grissom. AP

According to court documents, Grissom, a truck driver, and another man, Jessie Johns, broke into the home of Dreu Kopf, a friend of Matthews, with the intention of committing a robbery.

Grissom shot and wounded Kopf and killed Matthews while she was hiding in a bedroom in an attempt to shield Kopf’s two children. Johns was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

In Florida, Edward James, 63, was also executed by lethal injection, in his case for the 1993 rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl, Toni Neuner, and the murder of Betty Dick, 58, her grandmother.

The Florida Department of Corrections announced that James was executed at 8:15 pm Thursday (0015 GMT Friday) at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, outside Jacksonville in the north of the state.

Previous executions

Earlier, on Tuesday this week, Jessie Hoffman, 46, was put to death by nitrogen gas in the southern state of Louisiana.

Hoffman, who was convicted of the 1996 rape and murder of Molly Elliott, a 28-year-old advertising executive, was the first person executed in Louisiana in 15 years.

Only one other US state, Alabama, has carried out executions by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a facemask, causing the prisoner to suffocate. The method has been denounced by UN experts as cruel and inhumane.

Aaron Gunches, 53, who was sentenced to death for the 2002 murder of Ted Price, his girlfriend’s ex-husband, was executed in Arizona on Wednesday.

Karen Price sister of Ted Price (pictured off the left) speaks about the execution of Aaron Brian Gunches at the Arizona State Prison. AP

Gunches had abandoned legal efforts to halt his execution.

The vast majority of US executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 have been performed using lethal injection, although South Carolina executed a man by firing squad on March 7.

There have already been ten executions in the United States this year, following 25 last year.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.

President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and on his first day in office called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”