JARRATT, Va. (AP) — A killer who argued Virginia's procedures for lethal injection were unconstitutional was executed Thursday after a federal appeals court upheld the state's primary method of capital punishment.
Christopher Scott Emmett, 36, was convicted of beating a co-worker to death with a brass lamp in 2001 so he could steal the man's money to buy crack cocaine.
Emmett's appeal was the first to require a federal appeals court to interpret a U.S. Supreme Court decision in April that upheld Kentucky's three-drug method of lethal injection and apply it to another state's procedures.