(May, 17, 2006)—Texas death row inmate Jermaine Herron, 27, was executed Wednesday evening in Huntsville for the 1997 slayings of a woman and her 15-year-old-son at a ranch in South Texas.

Betsy Nutt, 41, and her son Cody were attacked at their home on a ranch in Refugio County.

Earlier Wednesday the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to block the execution after Herron’s attorneys challenged the drugs used in the deadly cocktail administered to condemned inmates, saying they cause “excessive pain.”

The U.S. Supreme Court also refused to stop the execution Wednesday.

Herron was the ninth inmate executed so far this year in Texas.

The Texas appeals court also lifted a stay it issued Tuesday blocking the execution of Derrick Sean O’Brien, whose attorneys raised the same issue about the drugs used in the lethal injection.

O’Brien had been scheduled to die Tuesday evening.

Three of the judges said O'Brien did not offer evidence that the drugs used by the state could cause a painful death.

A judge will need to set a new execution date for O'Brien, who was condemned for the 1993 torture slayings of two Houston girls, Jennifer Ertman, 14 and Elizabeth Pena, 16.

The two girls were taking a short cut home when they were spotted by members of a gang who called themselves the Blacks and Whites.

The boys were drinking beer and initiating a new member.

After the girls walked by, one of the boys grabbed Pena. As she screamed, Ertman ran to help.

Evidence shows the girls were gang raped for more than an hour and beaten, kicked and otherwise viciously attacked so hard that ribs were broken.

Then, they were strangled.

Their bodies weren't found until four days later.

O’Brien was the first of five gang members scheduled to die for the killings.

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