A former police officer has been executed despite a last-minute legal batte over allegedly 'expired' death drugs.
Robert Fratta, 65, was found guilty of hiring two people to kill his estranged wife Farah Fratta almost 30 years ago following a contentious divorce.
He was administered a lethal injection on Tuesday evening at Huntsville state penitentiary in Huntsville, United States and pronounced dead at 7:49 p.m.
Local media reported that a spiritual advisor held his hand and read scripture as the injection was given. Robert and Farah Fratta’s oldest son and Farah Fratta’s brother witnessed the execution.
It comes despite a judge issuing a temporary injunction against Texas Department of Criminal Justice intended to prevent them from injecting prisoners with expired drugs.
But the legal challenge was shot down by an appellate court, who ruled that the death penalty should go ahead.
Three death row inmates had alleged in a lawsuit that Texas planned to use expired and unsafe drugs to carry out executions.
Texas was the first state to use the lethal injection as an execution method in 1982 but in recent years has turned to compounding pharmacies to obtain pentobarbital, after traditional drug companies refused to sell their products to prison agencies.
The U.S. Supreme Court had earlier declined an appeal from Fratta's lawyers which argued that prosecutors withheld evidence that a trial witness had been hypnotised by investigators.
Fratta is the first inmate put to death this year in Texas, and the second in the United States. Eight other executions are scheduled in Texas for later this year..
Prosecutors say he organized the murder-for-hire plot in which a middleman, Joseph Prystash, ordered shooter Howard Guidry to kill Farah Fratta, 33 in February 1994.
She was shot twice in the head by Guidry in her home's garage in the Houston suburb of Atascocita.
They said Fratta had repeatedly expressed his desire to see his wife dead and asked several acquaintances if they knew anyone who would kill her, telling one friend, "I'll just kill her, and I'll do my time and when I get out, I'll have my kids," according to court records.
The killing followed a custody fight over their three children.
Just 24 hours after she was found dead at their Texas home, Fratta approached media and told news cameras "I hope they find the guy soon" - while wiping his face to check his appearance and grin at reporters.
A statement released on behalf of the rest of the family following his execution condemned Fratta, reading: “He was a coward in 1994 and he was a coward today when he couldn’t even apologise to his own son.”
When asked by the warden if he had a final statement prior to his execution, Fratta replied: “No.”
