Super deluxe combo ..then killer executed
Controversial cocktail ends child rapist’s life in 22 mins
A CHILD killer chose a big burger meal before being executed with a cocktail of controversial drugs.
Billy Ray Irick, after being given the lethal injection, choked, gasped for air and “turned dark purple”.
It took 22 minutes for him to become the first Tennessee inmate put to death in nine years.
The 59-year-old, whose execution was postponed four times, was convicted of the 1985 rape and murder of seven-year-old Paula Dyer, who he had been babysitting in Knoxville.
He had confessed to the crime but tried to blame mental health issues.
Last-minute attempts on Thursday failed to put off the sentence, which went ahead amid a challenge to the state’s death penalty law.
Irick, for his final meal, had eaten a “super deluxe combo” burger and onion rings with a Pepsi to drink.
Moments before officials began administering the fatal doses at 7.26pm, as he was strapped down, he refused to make a final statement. But as his execu- tion began, he muttered: “I just want to say I’m really sorry. And that… that’s it.”
Eight minutes after being given the injection, he began convulsing.
When Irick – with near shoulderlength hair, a scraggly beard and dressed in a white prison jumpsuit and black socks – then showed no reaction, an attendant yelled “Billy” and checked him. He was pronounced dead at 7.48pm.
The injection consisted of a sedative midazolam, a muscle-relaxer vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride.
In recent years, lawyers for death row inmates have raised questions about midazolam’s effectiveness.
Paula’s mother Kathy and family members watched the execution but declined to comment. After the execution at a prison in Nashville, Tennessee, Attorney General Herbert Slatery said: “I hope tonight’s lawful execution in some way eases the heartache Paula’s family has lived with and brings a degree of closure.”
This was the 15th US execution this year and Tennessee’s first since 2009.
I hope this eases the heartache Paula’s family has lived with
HERBERT SLATERY TENNESSEE LAW CHIEF