Tennessee has executed Harold Wayne Nichols by lethal injection for the 1988 rape and murder of Karen Pooley, a 20-year-old Chattanooga State College student, the Associated Press reported.
Nichols, 64, admitted to killing Pooley and raping several other women in the Chattanooga area. Although he expressed remorse during his trial, he admitted he would have continued his violent behavior if he had not been arrested. He was sentenced to death in 1990.
"To the people I have harmed, I am sorry," Nichols said in his final statement.
Nichols was strapped to a stretcher with a sheet pulled up just above his waist and a long tube extending from an adjacent room to an IV system inserted into the inside of his elbow. At one point, he took a very deep breath and his entire body straightened. His breathing slowed, then stopped, and he was pronounced dead.
Nichols' sister, Deborah Perry, watched the execution from the witness box and wept softly, but did not speak.
Cryptocurrency magnate Do Kwon was sentenced to 15 years in prison for defrauding investors who lost billions when his stablecoin project TerraUSD collapsed in 2022, the Associated Press reported.
Kwon's sentencing by a federal judge in New York comes after he pleaded guilty in August to fraud charges stemming from the $40 billion collapse of Terraform Labs dollars.
The company advertised TerraUSD as a reliable "stable currency" - a type of currency that is usually tied to stable assets to prevent drastic price swings. But prosecutors say it was all an illusion that collapsed, devastating investors and triggering a "cascade of crises that have flooded cryptocurrency markets.".
Kwon previously agreed to surrender more than $19 million, which authorities say reflects ill-gotten gains, as part of a plea agreement.