A More Palatable Way of Killing

A "More Palatable" Way of Killing Texas carries out the first execution by lethal injection

Two doctors stood by. With the medical paraphernalia—intravenous tubes, a cot on wheels and a curtain for privacy—the well-lighted cubicle might have been a hospital room. But Charlie Brooks Jr., a good-looking Texan strapped to the cot, was perfectly healthy. Then, just after midnight last Tuesday, the curtain was drawn back so that 18 unsmiling visitors, three of them Brooks' guests, could watch him die from eight feet away.

Warden Jack Pursley posed the traditional question, and Brooks, 40,...