'Brain damaged' killer executed in US

A man who offered a lift in his car to a man he had been drinking with, and then shot him and dumped his body in a river was executed by injection today.

Joseph Earl Bates, 35, had blamed the crime on brain damage he suffered in a car accident three years earlier.

Bates was pronounced dead at 2.14am (7.14am Irish time) at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina, said Department of Correction spokeswoman Pam Walker.

He had confessed to killing Charles Edward Jenkins after agreeing to give him a ride home from a bar.

Bates was convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping in 1991 but his conviction and death sentence were overturned because he did not receive funds for a mental health expert.

Bates was convicted and resentenced to death for the 1990 killing, though the expert in his second trial in 1994 did not know about his brain injury.

Bates’ family and friends said he was coerced into the killing by two other men, one of whom received a suspended sentence for aiding in the kidnapping.

Two other inmates have been executed in North Carolina in the past five weeks.