Texas Execution of Rapist-Killer Is 3rd This Week

Texas executed its third killer this week on Thursday when a man who raped and murdered an elderly woman was put to death by lethal injection.

Paul Nuncio, 31, was the 22nd person executed this year in Texas, which leads the nation in capital punishment.

Nuncio was sentenced to die for beating, raping and strangling Pauline Farris, 61, after breaking into her home in the northwest Texas town of Plainview on Dec. 3, 1993.

He told police he was high on drugs and alcohol at the time and was trying to get money to buy more drugs.

In a last statement while strapped to a gurney in the Texas death chamber, Nuncio insisted he did not kill Farris.

“I have felt deeply sorry for the deceased. But I’m sorry that I wasn’t the one that did it,” he said. “Love you all.”

His execution followed those of Thomas Mason, 48, on Monday and John Burks, 44, on Wednesday at the state prison in Huntsville, 75 miles north of Houston.

Mason killed his mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law in a 1991 attack. Burks gunned down a tortilla shop owner in a 1989 robbery.

Texas has put 221 people to death since resuming executions in 1982, six years after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a national death penalty ban. Of that number, 134 have taken place since Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, took office in 1995.