Executions set to resume in Texas

DALLAS, June 11 (UPI) -- Texas prepared to resume executions Wednesday after the state's highest criminal court gave the go-ahead in the case of Karl Eugene Chamberlain.

Chamberlain, convicted in the 1991 murder and rape of Felecia Prechtl of Dallas, was scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday night, The Dallas Morning News reported.

His execution was originally set for last February but Dallas County asked that it be re-scheduled to await a U.S. Supreme court decision in a Kentucky case on the constitutionality of lethal injections.

In April, the high court ruled that death by lethal injection was not cruel and unusual punishment.

Other states resumed executions but Texas did not, awaiting a decision by the state's court of criminal appeals in a case challenging the Texas method of capital punishment.

On Monday, the Texas court ruled that the state's lethal injection protocol was "materially indistinguishable" from Kentucky's, clearing the way for Chamberlain's execution.