US executes its 1,000th prisoner since 1976
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-02 15:31

Convicted killer Kenneth Lee Boyd was executed early Friday, becoming the 1,000th prisoner put to death since the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Boyd, 57, was pronounced dead at 2:15 a.m. (0715 GMT), said state Department of Correction spokeswoman Pam Walker. His death came after both Governor Mike Easley and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene and stop the execution.

"Having carefully reviewed the facts and circumstances of these crimes and convictions, I find no compelling reason to grant clemency and overturn the unanimous jury verdicts affirmed by the state and federal courts," Easley said in a statement issued a few hours before the execution.

Boyd did not deny that in 1988 he shot and killed Julie Curry Boyd, 36, and her father, 57-year-old Thomas Dillard Curry. Family members have said Boyd stalked his estranged wife after they separated following 13 stormy years of marriage and once sent a son to her house with a bullet and a note saying the ammunition was intended for her.

Boyd told The Associated Press in a prison interview that he wanted no part of the infamous numerical distinction of being the 1000th prisoner executed. "I'd hate to be remembered as that," Boyd said Wednesday. "I don't like the idea of being picked as a number."

The Supreme Court in 1976 ruled that capital punishment could resume after a 10-year moratorium. The first execution took place in January of the following year, when Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in Utah.