Texas executes man convicted of killing two over $20 drug deal
The first U.S. execution of 2017 was held on Wednesday when Texas lethally injected a man convicted of killing two men in a revenge plot after one had tricked him in a $20 drug deal. Christopher Wilkins, 48, was pronounced dead at 6:29 p.m. local time (0029 GMT Thursday) after the injection at the state's death chamber in Huntsville, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a press release. The execution was the 539th in Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the most of any state.