A convicted Death Row killer has been executed today after a last-gasp appeal claiming he had mental illness failed.

Tracy Beatty has been given a lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville on Wednesday evening.

The 61-year-old strangled his mum Carolyn Click after an argument at her east Texas home in November 2003.

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Beatty buried the 62-year-old next to her mobile home in Whitehouse, south-east of Dallas, before spending her money on alcohol and drugs.

Lawyers representing Beatty asked the US Supreme Court to stay his execution, arguing a full examination to determine whether he is intellectually disabled – potentially making him ineligible for the death penalty – should be carried out.

Beatty is the fourth inmate put to death this year in Texas and the 13th in the US.

The Mirror reports that Beatty has previously been given three prior execution dates.

His attorneys have requested that state prison officials allow Beatty to be uncuffed during mental health evaluations by experts.

The experts argue that having Beatty uncuffed during neurological and other tests is crucial to making an informed decision about intellectual disability and evaluating his mental health.

One expert who examined Beatty said he "is clearly psychotic and has a complex paranoid delusional belief system" and that he lives in a "complex delusional world".

In 2021, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice put in place an informal policy, citing security and liability concerns, that would only allow an inmate to be unshackled during an expert evaluation through a court order.

Federal judges in East Texas and Houston and the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans previously ruled against Beatty's request for an evaluation without handcuffs.

US District Judge Charles Eskridge in Houston last week questioned why Beatty's lawyers had not raised any claim relating to his mental health during years of appeals and said requiring handcuffs during such an evaluation is "quite simply, a rational security concern."

While the Supreme Court has prohibited the death penalty for individuals who are intellectually disabled, it has not barred such punishment for those with serious mental illness, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The Texas Legislature considered a bill in 2019 that would have prohibited the death penalty for someone with severe mental illness. The legislation did not pass.

On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously declined to commute Beatty's death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant a six-month reprieve.

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