An American was executed yesterday Thursday in Texas, who, according to prison authorities, killed four people 30 years ago in connection with the drug trade, which until the end he maintained that he did not commit.

The 52-year-old Arthur Brown Jr was executed by injection and pronounced dead at 18:37 (local time) at the Huntsville Correctional Facility.

“What is happening tonight is not justice, it is the murder of an innocent man for a murder that occurred in 1992,” Brown Jr. said shortly before his death, according to a statement from the Texas Department of Corrections.

He is the fifth executed since the beginning of the year in this southern US state and the ninth in the country.

In accordance with indictment, went in 1992 with two accomplices to the house of the man from whom he was buying drugs, in Houston. After tying up the six people who were there, they put a bullet in the back of the head.

Four of the victims, including one minor and one pregnantdied and two survived.

Arthur Brown Jr. was captured four months later and sentenced to death in 1994, although he always he pleaded not guilty.

His alleged accomplices were also convicted of the murders: one was executed in 2006 and the other is serving a life sentence.

As his execution date approached, the lawyers of Brown had stepped up their efforts to save him. They expressed their doubts about the investigation, which was based on not very reliable testimonies, and asked in vain for a new DNA test to be carried out.

They also asked the US Supreme Court, which has prohibited the execution of persons suffering from mental retardation, to cancel his execution on this ground, however without success.

However, they were joined by the British billionaire Richard Branson, who on the Virgin website asked to “stop execution” by Arthur Brown. According to him, new evidence points to another suspect and “his mental disability” should be “reason enough not to proceed with the execution”.