Texas executes accomplice to killing

HUNTSVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 20 (UPI) -- A Texas man was put to death Thursday evening for his part in a deadly 1996 robbery after Gov. Rick Perry refused to follow a recommendation for clemency.

Robert Lee Thompson, 34, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville within an hour of the governor's announcement, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

The Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 5-2 Wednesday to recommend commuting Thompson's sentence to life, an unusual step in Texas. Thompson did not shoot Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed, a clerk in the Seven Evenings convenience store in Houston who was killed during the holdup, although he shot another clerk who survived.

Sammy Butler, Mohammed's killer, was tried separately from Thompson and received a life sentence because the jury believed he did not intend to kill.

Perry described Thompson as having a "murderous history." Houston police said at the time they believed the two men were behind other fatal robberies in the days before the Seven Evenings killing.

In Texas, accomplices to killings can be sentenced to death under the "law of parties." In most states, only actual killers are exposed to the death penalty, except in murder-for-hire cases.