The US state of Georgia has executed its only female death row inmate, Kelly Gissendaner, depite a plea for clemency from the Pope.
The parole board denied her a stay of execution and she was pronounced dead at 12.21am local time (5.21 BST) after a lethal injection.
Gissendaner asked for a final prayer before she died, according to prison spokeswoman Lisa Rodriguez-Presley.
The board was not swayed by her appeal, nor by a letter they received from Pope Francis' US representative seeking mercy for Gissendaner.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano's message on the Pontiff’s behalf asked for a commutation of her sentence "to one that would better express both justice and mercy".
The Pope, who toured the US last week, is an outspoken opponent of the death penalty.
Gissendaner, 47, was convicted over the 1997 murder of her husband, but her lawyers argued she was a model inmate filled with remorse over the killing.
Her lover, Gregory Owen, carried out the murder - abducting Doug Gissendaner and stabbing him to death in woods in Atlanta.
Owen took a plea deal and testified against her. He is serving a prison sentence.
Gissendaner's lawyers argued her sentence was disproportionate because she did not carry out the murder herself and was not there when it happened.
The family of Doug Gissendaner said she had shown him no mercy.
"As the murderer," the family said in a statement, "she's been given more rights and opportunity over the last 18 years than she ever afforded to Doug who, again, is the victim here."
However, the couple's three adult children had backed their mother's case.
Gissendaner's execution - which took place at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson - is the first carried out on a woman in the state in 70 years.
She is the 16th woman executed in the US since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Sympathisers had taken to social media using the hashtag #kellyonmymind to call for her life to be spared.
Gissendaner had requested a last meal of cheese dip and chips, Texas fajita nachos and a diet frosted lemonade.
Her date with the death chamber had been postponed twice this year.
The first was in February because of a winter storm, and the second time a month later because the lethal drugs were "cloudy".
Meanwhile attorneys for Oklahoma death row prisoner Richard Glossip have made a last-ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court to grant a stay of execution.
He is due to die at 3pm local time (9.00pm BST) today.
(Sky News)
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