Texas executes man who strangled transvestite

Washington - Texas executed on Wednesday a man who killed a transvestite during a sex game, prison officials said, in a case which drew the attention of Pope Francis.

Richard Masterson, 43, who failed in a desperate last-ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court, received a lethal injection and died at 18:53, a spokesperson for the local prison adminstration told AFP.

He is the second person executed in the US this year.

Masterson was convicted of strangling to death Darin Honeycutt in 2001 in Houston.

Masterson admitted strangling Honeycutt but said that it was an accident and that the victim died of a heart attack during consensual sexual relations.

According to Masterson, Honeycutt had asked him to be choked to reach a state of erotic asphyxiation, a practice that deprives the brain of oxygen to reach a more intense orgasm.

Pope Francis, a death penalty opponent, had been closely following the case, said Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn at a press conference on Monday.

Twenty-eight people were executed in the US in 2015, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center.