HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- A roller-coaster ride is how Jerry Nutt described the hours he and his family waited to find out if the man convicted of fatally shooting his wife and son would be executed.
Attorneys for Jermaine Herron had hoped an appeal claiming the drugs used in lethal injections cause cruel and unusual punishment would get Herron a delay on Wednesday, two days after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a similar request to another death-row inmate.
But the appeals court denied Herron's request and, in a separate opinion, lifted the temporary stay of execution it had granted to the other Texas inmate. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Herron's last-minute appeal on the same claim.
After an hour delay, Herron's execution proceeded and he was pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. CDT, seven minutes after the lethal dose of drugs began.
"It's just amazing how they can manipulate the system," said Nutt, 57. "I'll tell you what the cruel and unusual punishment is, it's the victims having to wait for justice. That is what's cruel and unusual."
Nutt said he was surprised that Herron apologized to him and his family after having previously claimed he didn't commit the slayings.
"I just hope this brings some kind of peace to your family," Herron told Nutt during his last statement. "I wish I could bring them back, but I can't. I hope my death brings peace. Don't hang on to the hate."
Herron then looked at his mother, who watched from a nearby window. "Momma, stay strong," he said. "Lord forgive me for my sins because here I come."
As the drugs began to take effect, he kept his eyes on his family. Three members of the victims' family braced their hands on each other's shoulders as they watched.
Herron, 27, was the ninth prisoner put to death this year in Texas and the second of three this month. He was convicted in the shooting deaths of Betsy Nutt, 41, and her 15-year-old son, Cody, at their home on a ranch in Refugio County in south Texas.
Herron and a companion, Derrick Frazier, approached Betsy Nutt at her family's mobile home on a ranch about 10 miles outside Refugio, saying they had car trouble and needed to make a phone call. Nutt and her son were fatally shot as they were about to give the two men a ride to town.
The men then used her truck to carry loot taken during a burglary from the house next door. The slain woman's cell phone and the murder weapon, a 9 mm handgun taken in the burglary, were recovered from the apartment of Herron's girlfriend.
Herron turned himself in three days after the slayings. He and Frazier gave nearly identical confessions, but later each defendant blamed the other for the killings. Both men received the death penalty.
Three weeks ago, Frazier won a reprieve from the Court of Criminal Appeals days before his scheduled execution after his lawyers contended a juror at his trial improperly communicated with Jerry Nutt.
Herron had hoped to also win a reprieve, but on claims the chemicals he would receive during his lethal injection would cause him to "suffer excruciating, excessive pain," his attorney claimed in the appeal.
The appeal cited the court's ruling Monday that halted Tuesday's scheduled execution of Derrick Sean O'Brien, 31, for the 1993 torture slayings of two Houston teenage girls.
The court did not refer to the O'Brien case in its brief ruling denying Herron a stay.
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To talk without thinking is to shoot without aiming.
