WASHINGTON, United States (AFP)— The state of Missouri on Tuesday executed a man sentenced to death three separate times for murdering a couple more than a quarter of a century ago.

Carman Deck, 56, received a lethal injection at 6:10 pm (2310 GMT) in the Bonne Terre penitentiary in the central United States, the state department of corrections told AFP.

“Tonight, justice was served. The Department of Corrections carried out the sentence recommended by the jury and ordered by the court,” Missouri Governor Mike Parson said in a statement.

On Monday, the Republican governor refused to grant clemency and commute Deck’s sentence to life imprisonment, as activists had called for.

The US Supreme Court had also rejected a final appeal by Deck’s lawyers on Monday, leaving him no further legal recourse to prevent his execution.

Deck is the fifth person to be put to death in the United States so far this year.

In 1996, Deck killed an elderly couple, James and Zelma Long, in suburban St Louis. He had always admitted his responsibility for the crime.

According to the Kansas City Star newspaper, whose editorial board pleaded for the sentence to be commuted, in 2002 the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the verdict of a first trial, on the grounds that his lawyers had done a poor job of defending him.

In particular, they had failed to present his difficult childhood in foster families.

The US Supreme Court in 2005 overturned a second trial, where Deck appeared with restraints on his feet, wrists and abdomen that were deemed likely to have influenced the perception of the jurors.

In 2008, he received the death penalty in a third trial, but the sentence was overturned in 2017 by a federal judge, on the grounds that all available evidence had not been presented to jurors.

An appeals court, however, restored the decision in 2020, a ruling later upheld by the state Supreme Court.