Virginia conducts first execution since 2006: official

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Convicted murderer Kevin Green was executed on Tuesday by lethal injection in Virginia, the US state's first execution since 2006, a state official said.

Green, 31, was the third prisoner executed in the United States since the Supreme Court ended a defacto seven-month hiatus on executions while the constitutionality of lethal injections -- the method used to execute most death-penalty inmates -- was challenged.

In April the Supreme Court ruled that lethal injection did not amount to "cruel and unusual punishment," which is banned by the US constitution, and in early May an inmate, William Lynd, was executed in the southern state of Georgia.

Green, sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of a woman during a drugstore robbery, was executed...