Texas has executed Willie Trottie after the US supreme courts rejected last-minute appeals against the convicted double murderer being put to death by lethal injection.

The death sentence against Trottie, who shot dead his former common-law wife and her brother more than two decades ago in Houston, was carried out on Wednesday evening. He had contended he had poor legal help at his trial and questioned the potency of the execution drug.

Trottie repeatedly expressed love to witnesses – both people he selected and relatives of his victims, Barbara and Titus Canada – and several times asked for forgiveness as he was about to be executed. “I love you all,” he said. “I’m going home, going to be with the Lord … Find it in your hearts to forgive me. I’m sorry.”

Trottie, 45, was pronounced dead at 6.35pm, 22 minutes after the injection began. His was the eighth lethal injection this year in Texas and the first in the nation’s most active death penalty state since recent executions went awry in Oklahoma and Arizona. Unlike those states, where a drug combination is used for capital punishment, Texas uses a single lethal dose of pentobarbital.

He became the second death row inmate executed in the US on Wednesday. Earl Ringo Jr received a lethal injection just after midnight in Missouri for a 1998 robbery and double murder.

After Trottie’s execution, relatives of his victims released a statement saying they were relieved justice was “finally served all these years later … it’s time for our family to end this chapter and be able to move on”.

Trottie had acknowledged shooting Barbara Canada, 24, and her brother, Titus Canada, 28, at their parents’ home in Houston. But Trottie said the May 1993 shootings were accidental, in self-defence and not worthy of a death sentence.

Prosecutors said he had threatened to kill Canada, who had a protective order against him, if she didn’t return to him. They said he carried out that threat when barging into the house and opening fire.

Trottie’s attorneys had argued to the Supreme Court that lawyers at his 1993 trial were deficient for not addressing his self-defence theory and for failing to produce sufficient testimony about Trottie’s abusive childhood with an alcoholic mother.



State attorneys scoffed at the argument, saying Trottie’s self-defence claim was absurd and had been rejected in earlier appeals.

Trottie’s attorneys also contended the dose of pentobarbital for his lethal injection was past its effectiveness date and could subject him to unconstitutional “tortuous” pain. The state responded that the drug did not expire until the end of the month and that tests showed proper potency. They argued the appeal seeking details of the drug was merely another attempt to force prison officials to disclose the compounding pharmacy that provided the execution drugs, something the courts repeatedly have refused to order.