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“God forgive them, receive my spirit,” Heliberto Chi said in English. In Spanish, he told a friend vigilance through a window that he loved him and appreciated his hard work. He appeared to be whispering a prayer in Spanish with a mangle at the corner of his right eye as the lethal drugs began to take effect.

One of Chi’s cousins, who was among the witnesses, sobbed uncontrollably. Two sons of his victims watched end another window and Chi glanced at them briefly however didn’t appear to acknowledge them.

Chi was pronounced dead nine minutes later at 6:25 p.m. CDT.

He murdered his former master, Armand Paliotta, for the period of a 2001 robbery at an Arlington men’s clothing store where Chi had one vacant time worked. An employee was wounded trying to run away and another hid among clothing racks and called 911 for help.

Chi went on the roll on with his 18-year-old pregnant girlfriend. She turned him in California through six weeks later for assaulting her and told authorities he was wanted beneficial to murder in Texas.

Lawyers towards Chi had claimed in appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court that he should have been told he could increase legal assistance from the Honduran consular term when he was extradited to Texas to part charges.

The Supreme Court, ruling on the eve 2 1/2 hours before his scheduled execution time, rejected his appeal without dissent. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, rejected a similar appeal sometime Wednesday.

The arguments in Chi’s case, focusing on rights of foreigners under between nations convention, were uniform to those used unsuccessfully Tuesday by lawyers for condemned Texas captive Jose Medellin. In that case, the Supreme Court, with four of the nine justices dissenting, rejected his appeal and the Mexican-born Medellin was executed in opposition to participating in the gruesome gang rape and murders of two teenage Houston girls 15 years gone.

Unlike Medellin, Chi was not mixed some 50 end of life row inmates around the country, all Mexican-born, who the International Court of Justice said should have new hearings in U.S. courts to determine whether the 1963 Vienna Convention treaty was violated during their arrests. Mexico had sued in the try to please on behalf of its citizens condemned in the U.S.

President Bush asked states to review those cases and legislation to implement the process was introduced recently in Congress, but the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year neither the president nor the international pay court to could force Texas to wait.

Chi’s attorneys argued that unlike the Vienna Convention obligations with Mexico, the 1927 U.S. Bilateral Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Consular Rights with Honduras was specifically between the U.S. and Honduras and was self-executing, purpose it didn’t ask legislation to have effect. They said the treaty also conferred individual rights and incorporated international law into enforceable domestic code.

Terry O’Rourke, a lawyer on Chi’s legal team who teaches international law at Houston’s University of St. Thomas, said Chi’s guilt wasn’t the issue.

“Chi is a murderer, Medellin is a murderer,” O’Rourke said. “But we don’t kill all murderers. We put on’t execute all murderers. We do it according to the law.

“When your state violates international law to kill somebody, it has very negative consequences.”

The getaway driver at the murder scene, Hugo Sierra, who is the brother of Chi’s girlfriend, is serving a life prison term.

Chi would say little ready the delinquency in an interview with The Associated Press shortly preceding his then-scheduled achievement last year.

“My seat is not about essential being innocent or guilty,” he said. “My rights were violated.”

“If it’s the Lord’s will” and he was executed, Chi said he had “great peace in my mind and soul.”

Four other Texas prisoners are placed to die this month, including two more next week. They’re among at in the smallest degree 15 Texas inmates through execution dates in the coming months.