Texas Executes Its First Inmate Of 2016

A Texas man put to death Wednesday for a killing 15 years ago became the busy death penalty state's first prisoner executed in 2016.

Richard Masterson, 43, was pronounced dead at 6:53 p.m., 25 minutes after the lethal injection began.

"I'm all right with this," he said. "Sometimes you have to live and die by the choices you make. I made mine and I'm paying for it." He said he was being sent "to a better place."

He mouthed a kiss to relatives and friends who were watching the execution through a window and told them he loved them. As the pentobarbital took effect, he began snoring. After about a dozen snores, he stopped moving.

Masterson had claimed the January 2001 strangulation of Darin Shane Honeycutt was accidental and had several appeals before the courts, including four with the U.S. Supreme Court. His last-day efforts to stop his execution were rejected.

Texas is the nation's busiest death penalty state, having carried out 13 lethal injections in 2015, which accounted for nearly half of the 28 executions nationwide.

Masterson had testified at his trial that the death of the 35-year-old Honeycutt in Houston happened accidentally during a chokehold that was part of a sex act. The two had met at a bar and then went to Honeycutt's apartment.

Honeycutt was an entertainer who performed dressed as a woman. Honeycutt's stage name was Brandi Houston.

No family members or friends of Honeycutt witnessed Masterson being executed.

Demonstrators gathered outside to protest the execution, echoing the opposition voiced from the Catholic Church, CBS affiliate KHOU reported. Earlier in the week, the cardinal of Vienna said he had been in communication with the convicted killer and that Pope Francis was following the case.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.