Virginia was the third state to put a convicted murder to death by lethal injection since the US Supreme Court ended an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment last month.

Kevin Green, 31, who was convicted for killing a southeastern Virginia convenience store owner in 1998 during a robbery, was pronounced death at 10 p.m., said Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections.

Green shot Patricia Vaughan, 53, and Lawrence Vaughan and stole $9,000 from her convenience store in rural Dolphin, situated more that 50 miles south of Richmond. The woman was shot four times and died, Lawrence Vaughan survived. Kevin Green confessed everything and was charged with capital murder and robbery and sentenced to death in 2000.  

The execution, which had been scheduled for 9 p.m., was delayed as Green’s attorneys tried to persuade the federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order. The U.S. Supreme Court, a federal judge and the state's governor each refused Tuesday to halt the execution. Gov. Timothy Kaine rejected a request for clemency, based on suppositions that Green is mentally retarded.  

Less than a week ago, Mississippi executed convicted murderer Earl Wesley Berry. He was the second inmate executed in the nation since the Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s lethal injection procedure in April. Georgia was the first to execute an inmate on May 6. After Virginia, the next execution is scheduled for June 3 in Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.