HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- The execution early Tuesday of Raymond Landry was interrupted for about 14 minutes when an intravenous tube carrying a deadly mix of chemicals popped free from a needle inserted into the condemned killer's arm.
A stream of liquid squirted freely from the IV tube inserted near the inside of Landry's right elbow about two minutes after the execution began.
Landry, who glanced briefly at his arm before staring again at the death chamber ceiling, died minutes later after the tube was reinserted.
When the tube popped out, Warden Jack Pursley quickly signalled a guard to pull a white curtain that shielded Landry from the view of witnesses. A low moan believed to be from Landry was heard from behind the white barrier.
The curtain was reopened about 14 minutes later, at 12:37 a.m. (1:37 a.m. EST), but Landry did not appear to be breathing and did not move again.
He was pronounced dead at 12:45 a.m. local time.
'There was a delay in the execution and officials indicated it was what they call a blowout,' said Texas Department of Corrections spokesman Charles Brown. The warden ordered the (execution) team to come back in and reinsert the catheter and start again.'
'The remainder of the substance was introduced.'
Brown said it was the first time such a problem had occurred since Texas began executions by injection in 1982.
Landry, who was executed for the 1982 robbery-murder of a Houston restaurant owner, declined to make a final statement but muttered silently to himself as the execution began.
Late Monday, the Supreme Court stayed the execution of Samuel Hawkins, who was to have been killed shortly after Landry. The court ruling, which came less than three hours before Hawkins was to die, blocked what would have been the nation's first double execution by one state on the same day since 1965.
The court, however, refused earlier Monday to grant a stay to Landry, 39, a former electrician from Lafayette, La.
Texas has executed 28 men, more than any other state, since resuming capital punishment in 1982. Landry was the 104th person put to death in the United States since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.
Landry was given the death penalty for the Aug. 6, 1982, shooting death of Kosmas Prittis, 33, at a Dairy Maid restaurant Prittis owned in Houston. Prittis, a Greek immigrant, was robbed of more than $2,300 and shot in the head as he and his family prepared to close the restaurant.
Landry had received stays of five previous death dates.
Landry refused the offer of a final meal, and requested no personal witnesses for his execution. He had been on death row since May 1983.
Hawkins, dubbed the 'traveling rapist' for raping 13 women in the Texas Panhandle, was ordered to die for the Feb. 3, 1976, rape and stabbing death of Abbe Rogus Hamilton, 19, of Borger. The woman was six months' pregnant when she was killed with a hunting knife.
Hawkins, a former meat trimmer from Amarillo, later was convicted and also sentenced to die for the 1977 abduction, rape and bludgeoning death of Rhonda Keys, 12, of Amarillo. He told authorities he committed more than 40 rapes in the Texas Panhandle in the 1970s. 501
