HUNTSVILLE — After 32 years on Texas’ death row, David Lee Powell was executed Tuesday for the shooting of an Austin police officer during a routine traffic stop in 1978.

Powell, 59, became the longest serving inmate executed in Texas since the state began carrying out executions again in 1982, and was the 13th death row inmate to be executed in the state this year.

When given the chance, Powell gave no last statement to witnesses, but — except for a quick gasp and soft snoring — quietly succumbed to the lethal drug cocktail released into his body.

He was pronounced dead nine minutes later, at 6:19 p.m.

While all was silent inside the walls of the Huntsville Unit, the grounds outside the prison facility were bustling with activity.

Both pro- and anti-death penalty activists stood outside the taped off area of the site, as television crews and other media lined the sidewalk to capture witnesses making their way to and from the unit.

At another area, some 150 retired and active police officers from Austin waited outside the prison as the punishment was carried out. They stood at attention as Ablanedo's family left the prison.

“While we do not take lightly today's events, there is a sense of relief ... as the passage of time has allowed for healing,” said Wayne Benson, president of the Austin Police Officers Association. “However, no amount of time will relieve the sadness.”

Powell was executed about 30 minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. His attorneys had argued unsuccessfully that his exemplary behavior on death row over the past three decades showed jurors were wrong when they decided he would be a continuing danger and should die for killing 26-year-old Ralph Ablanedo.

In May 1978, Ablanedo pulled over a car driven by Powell's girlfriend because it had no rear license plate. A background check showed Powell, riding in the passenger seat, was wanted for theft and passing bad checks. Powell shot the officer 10 times with a Chinese version of a Soviet-made AK-47.

He was sentenced to death three times, most recently in 1999. The Supreme Court overturned his original conviction from 1978, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals threw out his death sentence from a 1991 retrial.

“I am infinitely sorry that I killed Ralph Ablanedo,” Powell said in a December 2009 letter, intended for the officer's family and kept in the inmate’s court file. “In a few frightful seconds, I stole from you and the world the precious and irreplaceable life of a good man.”

Bruce Mills, an officer who was Ablanedo's backup the night of the slaying and accompanied his mortally wounded partner to the hospital, eventually married Ablanedo's widow and adopted their two sons.

The family watched the execution from the viewing area. Mills had said earlier that it was time for the sentence to be carried out.

“I'm a big believer in due process,” he said. “He's had every single T crossed and I dotted to have this reviewed and that reviewed and reviewed again.”

Powell stared at the family as they entered the viewing area but said nothing.

He was not a typical criminal. He grew up on a dairy farm near Campbell in Hunt County, graduated a year early as valedictorian from his small high school and went into the honors program at the University of Texas at Austin.

He was majoring in physics and math and aspiring to be a doctor when he got hooked on methamphetamines and never finished college.

Powell was on his way to a drug deal when Ablanedo pulled over the car, said authorities, who later found .45-caliber handgun and about $5,000 worth of illegal drugs in the vehicle.

The next scheduled execution is that of Jonathan Marcus Green on June 30. Green was convicted in 2002 for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 12-year-old Montgomery County girl in June of 2000.



The Associated Press contributed to this story.