Kenneth Lee Boyd, a convicted killer, was executed in North Carolina early today, becoming the 1,000th prisoner put to death since the United States reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

The 57-year-old Vietnam veteran was pronounced dead at 2.15 am (0715 GMT), said a state Department of Correction spokeswoman, Pam Walker. His death came after both the state governor, Mike Easley, and the United States Supreme Court declined to intervene and stop the execution.

"Having carefully reviewed the facts and circumstances of these crimes and convictions, I find no compelling reason to grant clemency and overturn the unanimous jury verdicts affirmed by the state and federal courts," Mr Easley said in a statement issued a few hours before the execution.

Boyd did not deny that he shot Julie Curry Boyd, 36, and her father, 57-year-old Thomas Dillard Curry in 1988. Family members said Boyd stalked his estranged wife after they separated following 13 stormy years of marriage and once sent a son to her house with a bullet and a note saying the ammunition was intended for her.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that capital punishment could resume after a ten-year moratorium. The first execution took place in January of the following year, when Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in Utah.

When Boyd shot his estranged wife his son Christopher was pinned under his mother’s body as Boyd fired rounds from a .357-Magnum pistol into her. The boy pushed his way under a nearby bed to escape the barrage. Another son grabbed the pistol while Boyd tried to reload.

The evidence against Boyd, said prosecutor Belinda Foster, clearly supported a death sentence. "He rode around with the boys in the car, saying I’m going to go and kill everybody up there," Ms Foster said. "He went out and reloaded and came back and called 911 and said ’I’ve shot my wife and her father, come on and get me’. And then we heard more gunshots. It was on the 911 tape."

Boyd spent his last hours with family and friends and eating his final meal. Among his visitors on Thursday was one of his four grown sons, 35-year-old Kenneth Smith, who was not one of the boys that witnessed the murders. "He made one mistake and now it’s costing him his life," said Mr Smith, who visited Boyd with his wife, Kathy, and two children. "A lot of people get a second chance. I think he deserves a second chance."

Among those who witnessed Boyd's execution through the thick, twin glass panes between the viewing room and the stark death chamber were Thomas Curry’s niece and her husband, Boyd’s attorney, Thomas Maher, a small group of law enforcement officials and journalists.

"The execution of Kenneth Boyd has not made this a better or safer world," Mr Maher said. "If this 1,000th execution is a milestone, it’s a milestone we should all be ashamed of."

A larger-than-normal crowd of about 150 protesters gathered outside the prison in Raleigh, where officials increased security outside the facility. Police arrested 16 protesters late on Thursday after they sat down on the prison’s four-lane driveway, said Correction Department spokesman Keith Acree.

About 120 people gathered at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church for an interfaith prayer service on Thursday night, where they sang hymns and listened to Maher talk about Boyd’s case. Afterward, they walked from the church to the prison, carrying candles and anti-death penalty signs.

In his clemency petition, Boyd’s attorneys argued his experiences in the Vietnam War, where as a bulldozer operator he was shot at by snipers daily, contributed to his crimes.

While the pace of executions in America has lessened in recent years, the next execution is scheduled for 6pm Friday (2300 GMT) when South Carolina is due to put Shawn Humphries to death for the 1994 murder of a store clerk.

An October Gallup poll showed support for the death penalty among Americans to be at its lowest point in 27 years, but that low point translated into a 64 per cent approval rating of its use. That is down from a high of 80 per cent in 1994.

Twelve states do not have the death penalty. At least two states, Illinois and New Jersey, have formal moratoriums on capital punishment and commissions in California and North Carolina are studying the penalty’s use, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based anti-death penalty organisation.

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