A convicted murderer, said to have learning difficulties, has been executed in the United States. Forty-one-year-old Wanda Jean Allen was given a lethal injection at a state penitentiary in Oklahoma early today. She had been convicted of fatally shooting her lover in 1988. At the time, Ms Allen was on probation after being imprisoned for killing a childhood friend.
The execution came hours after the United States Supreme Court and the State Governor rejected pleas for a stay. Her case drew attention from death penalty opponents because her lawyers said that she had suffered brain damage as a child. Ms Allen was the first female African-American to suffer the death penalty in the United States in almost half a century.
