A 34-year-old man convicted of the 1990 rape and slaying of a Wake County hospital counselor was executed by injection on November 9.
Michael Earl Sexton was put to death about eight hours after Gov. Jim Hunt and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected pleas from Sexton's lawyers to stop the execution.
Sexton was sentenced to death for killing Kimberly Crews, 29, who was grabbed as she left work and assaulted in a van. Sexton was the first person put to death in North Carolina this year. The state reinstated the death penalty in 1977.
Hours earlier in Arizona, a man convicted of killing an 18-year-old woman after she asked his friend for $50 per month child support was also executed by injection. Donald Miller, 36, had been convicted in Arizona of shooting Jennifer Geuder at the behest of his friend, Jose Anthony Luna, the father of Geuder's then-1-year-old son. Miller shot Geuder once in the back of the head then shot her five more times.
Luna pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is serving 39 years to life in prison. Miller was convicted and sentenced to death.
Another execution had been scheduled in Pennsylvania but was stayed by a federal appeals court the night before. Daniel Saranchak was scheduled to die for the 1993 shooting deaths of his grandmother and uncle.
Saranchak, 32, has opposed all appeals on his behalf, but attorneys who formerly represented him are arguing he is not competent to waive appeals and have requested legal standing to file appeals on his behalf.

Alleged murderer accidentally released 
Toledo Blade

A nationwide search has been launched for an accused murderer who was mistakenly released from Ohio's Lucas facility recently – but whose absence wasn't discovered for three days.
Grady Brinkley, who walked out of the jail with 45 cents in his pocket, is considered extremely dangerous. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Brinkley in connection with the slashing death of his ex-girlfriend earlier this year.
“We want the public to know that an alleged murderer is out and about in the community,” Lucas County Sheriff Ken Perry said.
Brinkley, 33, was released from the jail at about 5 p.m. on November 3, after a paperwork error. Perry said the mistake was not discovered until about noon on November 6.
The mishap leading to Brinkley's release followed a hearing recently at Lucas County Common Pleas Court.
To make the case easier to handle, prosecutors had consolidated charges from two cases, and re-indicted Brinkley for aggravated murder and aggravated robbery in two separate instances.
After the new charges were filed, the old charges were dropped at the hearing in front of Judge James Jensen.
When Brinkley was taken back to jail, a deputy apparently noticed that the old charges had been dismissed but didn't realize new charges had taken their place, Perry said. Brinkley was released from the jail about 90 minutes after the hearing.