TEXAS HAS EXECUTED a man who killed a cross-dresser during a sex game, prison officials said, in a case which drew the attention of Pope Francis.

Richard Masterson, 43, who failed in a desperate last-ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court, received a lethal injection and died at 6.53 pm (00.53am Irish time) last night, a spokesman for the local prison administration said.

He is the second person executed in the United States this year.

Masterson was convicted of strangling to death Darin Honeycutt in 2001 in Houston.

Masterson admitted strangling Honeycutt but said that it was an accident and that the victim died of a heart attack during consensual sexual relations.

According to Masterson, Honeycutt had asked him to be choked to reach a state of erotic asphyxiation, a practice that deprives the brain of oxygen to reach a more intense orgasm.

Pope Francis, a death penalty opponent, had been closely following the case, said Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn at a press conference Monday.

Twenty-eight people were executed in the United States in 2015, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center.

Vienna’s cardinal, Christoph Schoenborn, said earlier this month that the pope had been informed about Masterson and was following the situation.

During his papacy, Francis has reinforced earlier Vatican teaching that capital punishment cannot be justified.

Additional reporting by AP

© – AFP 2016

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