A 44-year-old American man sentenced to death for the murder and rape of a college student in 1996 was executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma on Thursday, prosecutors and prison authorities in the central US state said.

An execution chamber with lethal injection in TexasPhoto: Texas Department of Criminal Justice via Bestimage / Bestimage / Profimedia

The rape and murder of 21-year-old University of Oklahoma student Julie Basken remained unsolved until DNA tests were conducted on Anthony Sanchez, who was jailed in 2002 in Oklahoma for a robbery.

State police then matched his DNA to that of the victim, leading to Anthony Sanchez’s 2006 death sentence.

Sanchez has always maintained his innocence and recently accused his father, who committed suicide in 2022, of the crime and which he said he confessed to.

But DNA tests on the deceased refuted that theory, and Anthony Sanchez’s appeals for a stay of execution were rejected.

He was executed Thursday morning at the state prison in McAlester.

In 2021, Oklahoma resumed executions after a six-year moratorium due to missed executions in 2014 and 2015. The execution of Anthony Sanchez was the third since the beginning of the year.

This is the 18th execution in the US in 2023, all by lethal injection.