Briton on death row executed

Tracy Housel, the convicted murderer who has British nationality, was executed on schedule shortly after midnight last night, British time, after the failure of his last-ditch appeal to the US supreme court.

Housel was declared dead 11 minutes after officials first inserted the poison into his veins. "If you want to call killing someone being smooth, then I guess it all went smooth as can be," said Gary Proctor, one of Housel's lawyers who was among the official witnesses. "It's just so pointless."

A prison spokesman said that Housel made a short statement apologising to his victim's family after being strapped to the trolley to be injected. He then asked for a reading of the 23rd psalm. "He went very quietly. There was no problem whatever."

Ten protesters held a candlelit vigil outside the jail. It as a drizzly night; normally executions in Georgia attract at least 30. The protesters were outnumbered by the British media. Four hours earlier, Housel had said goodbye to his family as they were ushered from the jail. His parting words were: "Whatever happens, we'll do it with dignity. It'll be OK." His mother, Lula Pellerin, said: "He did me proud. He said 'Momma, you stand tall'. He has made his peace with God."

Housel was then taken away to a cell next to the death chamber and given his final meal: steak, baked potato, corn, salad, milkshake and chocolate ice-cream.

Then he was strapped to the trolley, hooked up to a set of syringes controlled from an adjoining room, and injected with three types of poison from a machine controlled by two executioners. This sanitised method of execution replaced the electric chair in Georgia last year and is rapidly becoming the method of choice across the US.

The execution took place in the euphemistically named state "diagnostic centre" in Jackson, 50 miles south of Atlanta.

Even before the state pardons board rejected his appeal on Monday, Housel was moved out of death row to the medical wing to avoid the cry of "Dead man walking", made when the condemned man is led past the other prisoners to be put to death. The final petitions to the courts were based on the Vienna Convention, under which Housel should have been told of his right to consular access from Britain after his arrest 17 years ago.

Housel was apparently unaware of his British status, which rests on the fact that he was born in Bermuda, though he left there as a baby. Housel, 43, pleaded guilty in 1986 to killing Jean Drew, a woman he picked up at a diner in Lawrenceville, Georgia. State prosecutors claim he was a serial killer, and a senior policeman, John Latty, says Housel admitted 17 murders to him.

Defenders say Housel was mentally unfit at the time and was tortured before confessing.

Danny Porter, the district attorney in Gwinnett County, which covers Lawrenceville, said yesterday: "This has been a long time coming. "The jury made the right decision and I am relieved ths day has come."

He added: "Ms Drew's fam ily have expressed their desire for the case to be finished and her son said he wanted the execution done."

Britain and the rest of the EU have worked hard on Housel's behalf, despite his tenuous British status, an effort which has bewildered Georgia.

Housel is the 29th person to be executed in Georgia since capital punishment resumed in the US in 1976. However, he is the sixth in five months after a three-year hiatus caused by controversy about the electric chair.