A man who battered an estate agent to death using a plant stand at a model home in Texas has been executed by lethal injection.
Kosoul Chanthakoummane, 41, was found guilty of killing Sarah Walker who was found with more than 30 stab wounds at the house in McKinney, near Dallas, in 2006.
He had always claimed his innocence and there have been doubts about the reliability of evidence that was used against him at trial.
Witnesses said it was Chanthakoummane who was at the model home, an example house used by builders, while blood under her fingernails and a bite mark on the 40-year-old victim were linked to the death row prisoner.
But Chanthakoummane’s lawyers have said there are concerns about the reliability of DNA evidence and it is part of a pattern used by prosecutors in the case.
They have successfully discredited the claim his DNA was found on the bite mark to Ms Walker’s neck.
And two witnesses who gave evidence at the trial had been hypnotised by Texan officers - which can distort people’s memories.
But still the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, last Monday, refused to revoke Chanthakoummane’s death sentence or give him a 120 day reprieve.
“Critically, current scientific knowledge contradicts the trial court’s previous finding that the ‘only reasonable inference’ to be drawn from the DNA evidence is that Mr. Chanthakoummane violently attacked Ms. Walker,” wrote attorneys Catherine Clare Bernhard and Eric J. Allen, in an appeal last week, reported the Texas Tribune.
Evidence of DNA on Ms Walker’s fingernails and elsewhere at the model house, though, has convinced courts of his guilt.
Chanthakoummane, who was on parole for aggravated kidnapping and robbery, admitted he was at the house but only to get a drink of water.
He was also accused of stealing Ms Walker's Rolex watch and a silver ring but these have never been recovered.
Joseph Walker, the father of the victim, said before he died that he had forgiven the murderer.
