Virginia executes Robert Gleason Jr.

Robert Gleason, 42, was executed at 9:08 pm local time (0308 GMT) after a year on death row, said Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections in the state of Virginia.

Gleason was serving a life sentence for a 2007 murder when he strangled a 63-year-old prisoner in 2009 and another, aged 26, while he awaited sentencing.

"Gleason has expressed no remorse for these horrific murders. He has not sought to appeal his convictions and has not filed a petition for clemency," Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell said in a statement.

He added that he "found no compelling reason to intercede."

In press interviews, Gleason asked to be executed quickly to keep from killing and, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, told the court at his trial that he wanted the death penalty.

His defense team, however, had sought to save his life, highlighting his traumatic childhood, psychiatric woes, and history of drug and alcohol abuse.

"Gleason has said that he wants the January 16th execution to 'go as is,'" McDonnell said, adding that "he has been found competent by the appropriate courts to make all of these decisions."

Gleason, who received no visitors Wednesday, chose death by electrocution instead of lethal injection, according to Traylor.

His execution was the first by electric chair in the United States since that of Paul Powell in Virginia on March 18, 2010, according to the DPIC.

It said 157 executions out of 1,320, including 30 in Virginia, have been by electrocution since the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Gleason's execution also marks the first of 2013 and the first in Virginia since August 2011. In 2012, 43 inmates were executed in the United States, the DPIC said.

Use of the electric chair remains rare in Virginia. Since inmates were given the option in 1995, only 6 of the 85 inmates executed since then have chosen electrocution over lethal injection.

Cooper's mother, Kim Strickland, had made plans to witness the execution. She has sued the prison system over her son's death and said she hopes Gleason's family can have closure.

"May God have mercy on his soul," Strickland told AP before the execution. "I've been praying and will continue to pray that his family can heal from this ordeal."

Waton's sister, Barbara McLeod, said she had "mixed feelings" about the execution but "didn't want him to be able to kill more people."

"I deeply regret that the Virginia prison system set up my brother to be eliminated without due process as punishment for his mental illness," McLeod said in an email. She, nor anyone else from Watson's family, witnessed the execution.

Gleason did not visit with family before his execution. Inmate's families are not allowed to witness executions in Virginia.

Some protested outside the prison on Wednesday, saying Gleason's threats to continue killing should not be a reason to justify execution.

Despite Gleason's crimes and his insistence on being executed, "the state should not kill its own citizens under any circumstances," said Virginians For Alternatives to the Death Penalty Executive Director Stephen Northup.

Northup said Corrections officials should be able to keep the truly dangerous inmates like Gleason in solitary confinement away from all others: "We have the ability to keep everyone else safe from truly dangerous people without killing them."

Gleason becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Virginia, and the 110th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982. Only Texas has executed more condemned inmates (492) since the death penalty was re-legalized in the USA on July 2, 1976. Texas also resumed executions in 1982.

Gleason becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1321st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

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