Chaos erupted outside Texas' death chamber when the son of a condemned inmate became aggressive, shouted obscenities and threw fists after his father spoke his final words.

A US man convicted of beating his girlfriend’s two-year-old daughter to death in 1997 is set to be executed by lethal injection in Houston, Texas, tomorrow night.

A condemned woman inmate lost before the Texas parole board and a federal court as her lawyers tried to stop her scheduled execution.

A convicted killer was executed, even though the handling of his case by Houston’s troubled police laboratory had been called into question by two state senators and the police chief himself.

IF Pat Brosnan had researched his thinly veiled allegation (Irish Examiner, Dec 19) that George W Bush was directly responsible for 152 Texas death row executions during his tenure as state governor, he might have uncovered a fact that would have inconvenienced his entire argument.