Texas has executed its 17th inmate for the year, an Ohio serial rapist convicted of the 1993 choking death of a schoolteacher. Charles Daniel Thacker, 37, died of lethal injection in Huntsville at 6:32 p.m. Wednesday, the Houston Chronicle reported. Thacker was executed for fatally choking Karen Crawford, a 26-year-old second-grade teacher in Houston. She died two days after the attack. Before the capital conviction, Thacker served a little less than four years of two concurrent 12-year sentences he received in 1988 for robbery and sexual assault. Five months after his release, he beat and nearly stabbed to death a 62-year-old woman who had stayed late at a church. Ina final statement he thanked the two volunteer prison chaplains, and asked them to pass along a message: "Tell my family I love them. I am sorry for the things I have done. I know God will forgive me." Texas has two other executions scheduled this month. © Copyright 2005 by United Press International

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