A Texas inmate was executed Wednesday for killing a Dallas-area convenience store clerk during a shooting spree that he claimed was retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Mark Stroman, 41, said hate in the world needed to end shortly before the fatal drugs began flowing into his arms at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit. He was pronounced dead at 8:53 p.m., less than an hour after his final court appeal was rejected. Stroman claimed the shooting spree that killed two men and injured a third in late 2001 targeted people from the Middle East, though all three victims were from South Asia. It was the death of 49-year-old Vasudev Patel, from India, that put Stroman on death row. The lone survivor, Rais Bhuiyan, unsuccessfully sued to stop the execution, saying his religious beliefs as a Muslim told him to forgive Stroman. The courts denied his requests. Stroman's execution was the eighth this year in Texas. At least eight other inmates in the nation's busiest death penalty state have execution dates in the coming weeks. From inside the death chamber, Stroman looked at five friends watching through a window and told them he loved them. “Even though I lay on this gurney, seconds away from my death, I am at total peace,” he said. He called himself “still a proud American, Texas loud, Texas proud.” Feeling the drugs beginning to take effect, he said, he began a countdown. “One, two,” he said, slightly gasping. “There it goes.” Eleven minutes later, he was dead. None of Patel's relatives attended the execution, and instead selected a police officer to represent them. The execution was delayed for almost three hours before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals barred a state judge in Austin from considering Bhuiyan's lawsuit to block the lethal injection. The US Supreme Court had rejected appeals earlier in the day.
