Cartoonist Executed for Trooper’s Slaying

A man who fatally shot a police officer and who later earned two college degrees and became a successful cartoonist on death row was executed by injection Monday night.

Billy George Hughes Jr., 47, had become a lightning rod for both sides of the capital punishment issue.

To the abolition movement, Hughes was a model of how a man can rehabilitate himself. For victims’ rights groups, he was an example of how an unrepentant convict can abuse the legal process with ceaseless appeals.

Hughes had filed nearly a dozen appeals of his conviction for the 1976 murder of state Trooper Mark A. Frederick.