By the BBC's Sarah Robbins In Huntsville, Texas

Just a few minutes past seven in the evening, the glowing yellow clock on the side of Huntsville Prison in central Texas was ticking slowly.

Jackie Elliott, a British born man sentenced to die by lethal injection, had just been given the cocktail of drugs that would end his life.

A chaplain leaving the building a few moments later confirmed Elliott's death, and the small crowd of Amnesty International protesters started to peter out.

The state of Texas had just completed its seventh execution of a death row inmate this year.

Last call

Jackie Elliott was born in Suffolk and moved to Texas when he was six-months-old.

Timeline to death

12 noon Tuesday: prisoner transferred to Huntsville Unit. 3pm: Visits with lawyer 6:45 pm: all legal matters resolved 6:54 pm: taken from holding cell to death chamber 7:02 pm: lethal dose administered 7:09 pm: Elliott pronounced dead

By his early 20s, he was running with a rough crowd in East Austin and in 1986 he was arrested for his part in the rape and death of a neighbourhood girl, 19-year-old Joyce Munguia.

She was killed by the force of more than 30 blows to the head with a motorcycle chain and left to die in the seedy shadows of a freeway underpass.

Seven months later Elliott was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.

Elliott was still on death row in Texas some 16 years later and agreed to be interviewed by the BBC, just days before his execution was carried out.

He said he was innocent, and that there was much he had not been able to tell.

There had been four people present when Miss Munguia died, and Elliott said that while he could not say what had happened he had hoped that jury members would find him not guilty.

Bid for reprieve

"It was not me that killed her. I have always believed that they knew that," Elliott said.

Victim Joyce Munguia was a teenage mother

Elliott maintained he was not responsible for Miss Munguia's death until the very day of his execution.

On his way to the death chamber Elliott was asked if he wanted to make a statement, an allowance given by the warden at the Huntsville prison.

Elliot declined, saying quietly: "No, sir".

Clive Stafford Smith, a British lawyer who took up Elliott's case, was still battling to keep him from going to the Huntsville death chamber on Tuesday.

But just before seven in the evening, the signal was given and two groups of witnesses, first journalists and then Elliott's family, entered the building, walking past onlookers into the unit where the execution took place.

Inside, waiting already, were the mother, father and sister of Joyce Munguia.

Watching

They had been given separate seating areas.

When there's a crime, doesn't everybody want justice? Victim Joyce Munguia's sister

Also present were Elliott's sister and brother-in-law, as well as his son, John Elliott Jr.

Just days earlier, John Jr had told the BBC he did not know if he would be able to bear watching his father die.

Two-thirds of the population of the US supports the death penalty, and Jackie Elliott was the 293rd person to be executed in Texas since that state re-introduced the death penalty.

Miss Munguia's family said that she had not believed in the death penalty and had cried whenever she read about someone being put to death by the state.

Her sister, Candice, said she had also been against the death penalty until she saw what happened to her sister.

"We wonder why it has taken so long," she said recently.

It took seven minutes to end Jackie Elliott's life

"When there's a crime, doesn't everybody want justice?

"That's why we look to the justice system. We want somebody to say, hey, that's wrong, when it's wrong."

The "lethal dose" for John "Jackie" Elliott was administered at 7:02 pm on Tuesday and took seven minutes put an end to his life.

The vigil for Jackie Elliott outside the prison, by the few who had come to stand in the cold, wintry dark night, was quietly ended.