The Nation - News from Jan. 8, 1988

A man convicted of killing a woman during a $1 burglary was executed by injection in Huntsville, Tex., after a delay in which confused officials had placed him on the death chamber gurney only to halt the scheduled execution. The confusion surrounding the execution of Robert Streetman, 27, stemmed from a mistaken belief by the Texas attorney general’s office that a last-minute appeal was pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. “We had to wait to see if any additional filing was made,” said J. Kirk Brown, general counsel for the Department of Corrections. An hour after he was taken off the gurney, Streetman, who had repeatedly said he wanted to be executed, was put to death by lethal injection.