Robber Is 34th State Execution of 1999

An inmate who killed a man and cut off his finger during a 1995 robbery was executed by injection in a Huntsville, Texas, prison. Robert Atworth, 31, was the 34th person put to death this year in Texas, which leads the nation in capital punishment. Atworth, in a final statement while strapped to a gurney in the state death chamber, told his family he loved them and accepted responsibility for his crime. “Send me home,” he said. Atworth was sentenced to die for the April 2, 1995, murder of Thomas Carlson, who was shot and stabbed to death during a robbery in Richardson, Texas, near Dallas. When Carlson’s body was found, police saw that his right little finger had been sawed off.