Texas on Wednesday executed its 500th inmate since it reinstated the death penalty in 1982, passing a grim milestone in the state that has executed more prisoners than any other in the country.
As a few dozen protesters gathered outside the prison in Huntsville, Kimberly Lagayle McCarthy, 52, was put to death by lethal injection at 6:37 p.m. (7:37 p.m. ET), according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, making her one of a small number of women to have been executed.
McCarthy, a former cocaine addict, was convicted of killing her 71-year-old neighbor during a 1997 robbery. She was found guilty of using a butcher knife and a candelabra to beat and stab retired college professor Dorothy Booth. Using the same knife, she severed Booth’s finger to steal her wedding ring.
McCarthy was granted a retrial by an appeals court in 2002 on the ground that police had obtained her confession illegally, but she was sentenced to death row again.
Members of Booth’s family say they don’t care about Texas’ macabre tally, only about justice for their loved one.
“The only significance for us is that Kimberly McCarthy, because of her crack cocaine addiction or her sociopathic personality, deprived us of Dorothy Booth,” Randy Browning, Booth’s godson, told The Dallas Morning News. “Whether it’s the 500th or the 5,000th, it doesn’t matter.”
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