Execution of a man who killed his wife and raped her daughter

 The US state of Mississippi on Wednesday executed a man who killed his wife and raped her daughter.

David Cox, 50, received a lethal injection at Parchman Prison, an overcrowded prison in this conservative southern state, and was pronounced dead at 18:12 local time.

In 2009, his wife, who has a daughter from a previous marriage, reported him to the police after she learned that he was raping this child. He spent a few months in prison before being released on bail.

A few weeks later, he bought a gun to take revenge on his ex-wife. After storming her home, he shot her and left her to suffer for hours, while raping her 12-year-old daughter in front of her.

After pleading guilty to the murder, he was sentenced to death in 2012 and has since sought to carry out the sentence "as soon as possible".

Over the following years, his lawyers filed numerous appeals in an attempt to overturn the sentence, but to no avail. Three years ago, he began writing to judges asking them to dismiss his lawyer and set a date for his execution "as soon as possible".

He explained in a letter dated August 19, 2018, that he wanted to "execute his body for the crimes that were committed with premeditation, anger and joy," noting that he is an Amish. "Therefore, having lawyers is against my religion," he asserted in this handwritten letter.

After several medical examinations, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that he was qualified to make this decision and set a date for his execution Wednesday.

Thus, David Cox became the tenth prisoner on death row, executed in the United States in 2021, and the first since 2012 in the state of Mississippi, according to AFP.