ARIZONA (USA): SAMUEL LOPEZ EXECUTED FOR 1986 MURDER

Samuel Villegas Lopez, 49, hispanic, was executed at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence.
Lopez was sentenced to death in 1987 for raping 59-year-old Estafana Holmes and stabbing her to death at her apartment on October 29, 1986.
For the first time, the Department of Corrections allowed witnesses to watch, via close-circuit cameras, as executioners inserted the intravenous catheters that deliver the fatal drug, pentobarbital, into the condemned man.
Lopez becomes the 4th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Arizona, the 32nd overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1992, the 23rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1300th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.