article_snippet.sent: Sprouse was put to death by lethal injection Thursday night in Texas.
article_snippet.sent: A jury decided in 2004 that Sprouse should be put to death, and unsuccessful appeals since then have focused on whether Sprouse was mentally ill at the time of the slayings in 2002 and should be spared the death penalty.
article_snippet.sent: Sprouse died 22 minutes after being injected and is now the fifth inmate to be executed this year in Texas, the nation's most active death penalty state.
article_snippet.sent: he managed to fire 17 shots and wound Sprouse in the chest, leg and hand.
article_snippet.sent: Medical tests showed Sprouse, a Boone County, Missouri, native, had taken illegal drugs within the previous 48 hours. '
article_snippet.sent: Kent Sprouse, 42, was sent to death row for a 2002 shootout at a Ferris, Texas, convenience store that killed police Officer Harry Steinfeldt III (right) and customer  Pedro Moreno, whom Sprouse had asked for help repairing Sprouse car .
article_snippet.sent: Sprouse was charged but not tried for Moreno's death. '
article_snippet.sent: It was a senseless taking of two human lives,' Don Maxfield, the now retired Ellis County chief felony prosecutor who handled Sprouse's trial, said last week. '
article_snippet.sent: The U.S. Supreme Court in November refused to review Sprouse's case.
article_snippet.sent: I don't think it's too soon or too long or whatever,' Ferris Police Chief Sam Love said of Sprouse's scheduled lethal injection. '
article_snippet.sent: Sprouse is expected to be executed about 6 pm Thursday in Huntsville, more than 150 miles southeast of Dallas, by lethal injection.
highlights_snippet.sent: Kent Sprouse, 42, died of a lethal injection Thursday in Texas .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: It took 22 minutes for Sprouse to die after being injected .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: Sprouse was high on meth, but Sprouse insanity defense was rejected and Sprouse was sentenced to death in 2004 .
  