COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A man who stabbed an elderly couple to death after they refused to let him borrow their car was put to death Friday in the nation's 500th execution since capital punishment resumed in 1977.
Andrew Lavern Smith was executed by injection and pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m., prisons spokesman John Barkley said.Before the curtain was drawn on the death chamber, witnesses could hear people singing "Amazing Grace." Smith made no final statement.
Smith, 38, stabbed Christy Johnson 27 times and Johnson's wife, Corrie, 17 times in 1983. Johnson, 86, and his wife, 82, were Smith's cousins. He had rented a house from the couple.
Nine death-penalty opponents were arrested outside Broad River Correctional Institution in a civil disobedience protest shortly before the execution. They sat on the prison's entrance road and refused to move.
About 60 protesters, led by the South Carolina Coalition Against The Death Penalty, lighted candles for the 500 inmates executed nationally.