A double murderer became the 1,000th prisoner executed in the United States since the reinstatement of capital punishment when he was put to death by lethal injection on Friday.

Kenneth Lee Boyd, who was 57, died at 2:15 a.m. EST in the death chamber of Central Prison in North Carolina's state capital, Raleigh, spokeswoman Pamela Walker of the Department of Corrections said. Boyd's execution drew world attention because of the milestone it represented since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to be brought back in 1976 after a nine-year unofficial moratorium.

Boyd was strapped to a gurney and injected with a fatal mix of three drugs.

Boyd, a Vietnam war veteran with a history of alcohol abuse, was sentenced to death for the murder in 1988 of his wife and father-in-law committed in front of two of his children. About 100 death-penalty opponents gathered on a sidewalk outside the prison where they held candles and read the names of the other 999 convicts who have been put to death.