Texas executes man for 1996 strangling, beating death

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Texas has executed a man who was convicted of strangling a woman and beating her with a hammer before setting her body on fire two decades ago.

Robert Ladd, 57, received a lethal injection today after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments that he was mentally impaired and ineligible for the death penalty.

The high court also turned aside an appeal in which Ladd’s attorney questioned whether the drug Texas uses in lethal injections was potent enough to execute him without causing unconstitutional pain and suffering.

When he was arrested for the 1996 killing of 38-year-old Vicki Ann Garner, Ladd had been on parole for about four years after serving about a third of a 40-year prison term for the slayings of a Dallas woman and her two children. He pleaded guilty to those crimes.