Texas carries out first US execution of 2017

WASHINGTON — Texas prison authorities carried out the first US execution of 2017, as controversy continued to swirl around the drugs used to conduct such lethal injections.

Christopher Wilkins, 48, was executed at the Texas state penitentiary at Huntsville after the US Supreme Court denied him a last-minute reprieve.

Wilkins was convicted of a double murder in 2005, sparked when he said a dealer and his friend sold him a $20 dose of crack cocaine that turned out to be a rock, then laughed at him.

During his trial he also admitted to killing a man a day earlier in a dispute over a pay phone, and driving a stolen car into two people on a sidewalk because he thought one had stolen his sunglasses.

During his 2008 trial, Wilkins told jurors that the death penalty would be "no big deal," according to the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram.

But in his subsequent appeals, Wilkins, a former truck driver, insisted that he was poorly represented by his lawyers, including one who had already accepted a job with the prosecutor's office.

In most years, Texas executes more convicts than any other state, though last year Georgia surpassed it (with nine executions, to Texas's seven).

Nationwide, capital punishment has been falling for years — last year's total of 20 executions was a 30-year low, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based nonprofit.