A 53-year-old man convicted of the 2001 rape and murder of a teenage girl has been executed by lethal injection in the US state of Indiana, authorities said.
Roy Lee Ward was sentenced to death in 2002 for the murder of 15-year-old Stacy Payne at her home in the town of Dale.
Stacy was stabbed repeatedly and died of her injuries several hours after the attack.
Ward was arrested at the scene while still holding a knife.
The execution was carried out shortly after midnight local time at a state prison in Michigan City, the Indiana Department of Correction said in a statement.
Ward was the third person put to death in Indiana since the state resumed executions last year after a 15-year hiatus because of difficulties obtaining the lethal drugs used in them.
His last meal included a hamburger, a steak melt, chips, shrimp and breadsticks.
There have now been 35 executions in the United States this year, equalling the number of inmates that were put to death in 2014.
Florida has carried out the most executions with 13, followed by Texas with five and South Carolina and Alabama with four.
Twenty-eight of this year's executions have been carried out by lethal injection, two by firing squad and four by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.
The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others - California, Oregon and Pennsylvania - have moratoriums in place.
President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use "for the vilest crimes."
