In Huntsville, a mentally ill murderer spared from...

In Huntsville, a mentally ill murderer spared from execution 5 months ago by a last-minute reprieve was executed for fatally stabbing a woman during an attempted rape. James Colburn , 43, was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m. Colburn didn't deny killing the woman in 1994, but his attorneys contended it would be barbaric to execute the 9th-grade dropout because he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. The Supreme Court last year halted executions of the mentally retarded as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment, but the justices so far have refused such blanket protection for the mentally ill. Colburn's lawyers and death penalty opponents thought the high court would examine the issue when a Supreme Court order stopped Colburn's scheduled execution Nov. 6 at 5:59 p.m., 1 minute before he could have been moved to the death chamber. But without comment in January, the justices refused to review his appeal, lifted the reprieve and Montgomery County authorities rescheduled the execution. Colburn was convicted of choking and fatally stabbing a hitchhiker, Peggy Louise Murphy, 55, at his Conroe-area apartment just north of Houston as she resisted a rape attempt June 26, 1994. Colburn becomes the 12th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas, and the 22nd in the USA.