Arkansas man executed after three late stays
Tue Nov 29, 2005 12:28 AM ET

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (Reuters) - An Arkansas man
convicted of murdering a teen-age girl in 1993 was
executed on Monday, but only after the U.S. Supreme
Court delayed the lethal injection three times to
consider last-minute appeals.

After dismissing arguments by defense attorneys that
Eric Nance was mentally handicapped and thus
ineligible for capital punishment and that DNA
analysis could prove him innocent, the court allowed
the execution to proceed at 9:24 p.m. CST (10:24 p.m.
EST/0324 GMT), almost 90 minutes after it was
scheduled.

Vance declined to make a final statement before the
lethal injection was administered at the Cummins Unit
of the Arkansas prison system. He was pronounced dead
at 9:30 p.m. CST by the Lincoln County, Arkansas,
coroner.

Nance, 45, was convicted of kidnapping and capital
murder and sentenced by a jury to death for the
slaying of Julie Heath, 18, whose throat was slashed
with a box cutter. A week after her disappearance, her
body was found near Malvern, Arkansas, about 45 miles
southwest of Little Rock.

Nance's death brought to 998 the number of executions
in the United States since 1976, when the Supreme
Court authorized the resumption of capital punishment.

Condemned inmates in four other states are scheduled
to die this week, virtually ensuring that the number
of executions carried out in the United States since
1976 will reach the one-thousand mark.

Several eleventh-hour appeals by Vance's attorneys
were rejected by lower courts, and Governor Mike
Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican, declined a
petition for executive clemency hours before the
sentence was to be carried out.

"It brings closure that he is gone, but it will never
bring back Julie - what he's done to our family," said
Belinda Crites, a cousin of Heath's, following Nance's
death.

At mid-afternoon, prison authorities served Vance his
requested last meal of two bacon cheeseburgers, French
fries, two pints of chocolate chip cookie dough ice
cream and two cans of Coca-Cola.

Vance was the 27th person executed in Arkansas since
1976. Thirty-seven other prisoners are on the state's
Death Row, but no additional executions are scheduled.

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