Bobby Wayne Woods Executed

Finally, they executed this animal.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Texas has executed a 44-year-old man for raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl, despite pleas from his attorneys he is too mentally impaired to qualify for capital punishment.

The execution had been delayed briefly while attorneys for Bobby Wayne Woods asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the lethal injection pending a court ruling.

Justices denied Woods' last-ditch appeal just after 6 p.m. CST, just before his scheduled execution for the death of Sarah Patterson.

Woods, 44, had been transferred 45 miles from his death row cell at the Polunsky Unit near Livingston to a holding cell in Huntsville, a short walk from the death chamber.

Woods' attorney had argued that Woods was mentally impaired and ineligible for execution under court guidelines, and that previous appeals to spare Woods' life were unsuccessful because of shoddy work by his lawyers at the time.

Tests administered to Woods have put his IQ anywhere from the 60s to the 80s. An IQ of 70 is considered the threshold for mental impairment.

Woods was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to die for the April 1997 slaying of Patterson, his ex-girlfriend's daughter. She and her 9-year-old brother were snatched from their home in Granbury, near Fort Worth. Sarah's throat was slit with a knife. Her brother was beaten and left for dead but survived to testify against Woods.  Star Tribune