Kimberly McCarthy, a 52-year-old former occupational therapist convicted in 1997 of murdering her 71-year-old neighbor, Dorothy Booth, was executed on Wednesday evening at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. McCarthy became the 500th prisoner to be executed by the state since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated. The first woman to be executed in the United States in almost three years, McCarthy was said to have asked Booth - a retired college psychology professor - for a cup of sugar before entering her home and attacking her with a butcher knife and candelabra and cutting off her finger to take her wedding ring.
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A former nursing home therapist who had gotten hooked on crack cocaine, McCarthy was also linked to two other killings. After being arrested, she was found to be carrying Booth's credit cards and a bloodstained knife. In her last statement, she said, "This is not a loss, this is a win. You know where I am going. I am going home to be with Jesus. Keep the faith. I love y'all," McCarthy said, according to CNN.
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Texas prison officials then administered her a single dose of pentobarbital. USA Today wrote that as the drug began to take effect, McCarthy said, "God is great," closed her eyes and took several labored breaths before becoming quiet. She was pronounced dead 20 minutes later, at 6:37 p.m. CDT.
Texas has carried out nearly 40 percent of the more than 1,300 executions in the United States since the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment could resume in 1976. 32 states allow the death penalty, but four states - Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Arizona - were responsible for three-fourths of all of the nation's executions in 2012. Other states which in past years didn't hesitate to carry them out, such as North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri and Virginia, did not report a single one in 2012.
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Prosecutors are becoming more reluctant to press for the punishment, in part because of the cost. The average cost for the death penalty in Texas is $2.3 million - considerably more than the $750,000 it costs to keep convicts in jail for life. And juries may be less likely to move to hand out the death sentence: a 2012 CNN/Opinion Research Poll found that for the first time in recent memory, more Americans favor the life sentence to the death penalty for murderers, 50 percent to 48 percent. Similarly, the poll found that the percentage of Americans who believe an innocent person had been executed within the previous five years had skyrocketed to 72 percent, from 59 percent in 2005.
McCarthy was only the 13th woman to be put to death in the US and the fourth in Texas since 1976.
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