Texas executes man for killing woman and infant

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - A man convicted of killing his neighbor and her infant son was put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday in Texas, which leads the nation in executions.

Derrick Sonnier, 40, was the third person put to death in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court in April rejected a challenge to the three-drug cocktail used in most executions in the last 30 years.

He was sentenced to die for the 1991 murders of Melody Flowers and her son, Patrick. Flowers, a mother of five who lived in a Houston suburb, was raped, stabbed, beaten and strangled after she rejected his advances. The boy was stabbed twice.

Sonnier was the 408th inmate executed in Texas since 1982, when the state resumed the death penalty six years after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment.

Sonnier did not make a last statement or have a last meal request.

Texas has 13 more executions scheduled for this year, including six next month.

(Reporting by Anna Driver in Houston; Editing by Xavier Briand)