HUNTSVILLE, Texas, Nov. 14 -- Texas executed Stacey Lamont Lawton Tuesday night for the shotgun-slaying of a 47-year-old Tyler, Texas man during a 1992 Christmas Eve burglary.
Lawton, 31, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. CST after receiving a lethal injection in the first of three Texas executions scheduled this week.
He was sentenced to die for killing Dennis Price, who had caught Lawton and two accomplices breaking into a truck.
In his final statement, Lawton said several times he was innocent and sent his love to five relatives and friends who were witnesses.
"It wasn't supposed to happen, but I didn't do it," he said. "I really didn't do it. I don't want y'all to go through life thinking that I did."
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected Lawton's clemency petition earlier this week and he exhausted his court appeals last month.
Lawton and co-defendants Karlos Fields and Carlos Black were breaking into the truck in Price's front yard when the victim ran out of the house and Lawton shot him in the chest with a shotgun he had stolen during a two-day crime spree. The three fled in a stolen truck.
A witness saw Lawton, Fields and Black flee the scene of the shooting and described the stolen truck to state troopers who caught the trio after a high-speed chase.
Fields testified at trial that Lawton was the man who gunned down Price. Fields received a life sentence for his role in the crime. Black was a 14-year-old juvenile at the time.
Executions are also scheduled Wednesday and Thursday at Huntsville.
Texas leads the nation in executions. Thirty-six convicted killers have been executed this year in Texas and 235 since the state restored the death penalty in December 1982.