Man executed after 25 years on Texas death row

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - A man who spent 25 years on Texas death row was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday for a 1980 murder after prison officials had to carry him to the death chamber.

Joseph Nichols, 45, was the second person in as many days and the eighth person put to death this year in Texas. The state leads the nation with 387 executions since 1982, when it reinstated the death penalty six years after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a capital punishment ban.

He refused to walk to the death chamber but did not put up a fight, a prison spokeswoman said. In his last statement, he cursed prison staffers.

Nichols was convicted and sentenced to die for shooting Claude Shaffer during the robbery of a Houston food store on October 13, 1980.

An accomplice, Willie Williams, was executed on January 31, 1995, after pleading guilty to the crime.

Lawyers for Nichols and death penalty opponents fought Nichols' executions on grounds that Shaffer had one bullet wound in his body, yet Houston prosecutors accused both Williams and Nichols in their separate trials of being the shooter.

The Texas Coalition to Abolish The Death Penalty accused state prosecutors of presenting false evidence and suppressing favorable eyewitness testimony at trial.

The case wound its way through the courts for years before Nichols' final appeal was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court shortly before he was executed.

Nichols did not request a last meal.

On Tuesday, Texas put to death Robert Perez, 48, for killing two men in a 1994 gang dispute.

The state has 11 more executions scheduled this year, including three in March. There are 389 people on Texas death row.