Oklahoma executes man convicted of stabbing woman to death

By Heide Brandes OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - Oklahoma on Thursday executed a man who was convicted of murder after stabbing a woman 25 times and then attempting to blame the crime on an intruder. Kenneth Eugene Hogan, 52, convicted of murdering Lisa Stanley in her Oklahoma City apartment, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. CST (0013 GMT), according to a spokesman for the Oklahoma prison system. Hogan had said he was acting in self-defense after Stanley lunged at him with a knife during their fatal encounter on January 28, 1988. His execution began at 6:07 p.m. at the state's death chamber in a penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, and was witnessed by members of his family, state corrections department spokesman Jerry Massie said. Massie said Hogan's last words were, "I'm guilty of what I'm here for and I take responsibility for my actions. To Lisa's family, I'm sorry I can't undo it. To my family, I'm sorry for all the pain I've caused." Hogan said goodbye to his family, Massie said, and then said, "There's a chemical taste in my mouth. I'm going, I'm going, I'm going." Prosecutors said that after killing Stanley, Hogan tried to make the crime scene appear as if an intruder had broken in. He cleaned his wounds and went to the emergency room. Hogan's murder conviction was overturned by a federal court in 1999 on the grounds that the jury should have been allowed to consider a verdict of manslaughter. After a second trial in 2003, Hogan was again convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Hogan was the fifth person put to death in the United States this year and the second in Oklahoma. (Reporting by Heide Brandes; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Lisa Shumaker)