WASHINGTON — The U. S. State of Texas executed its 500th convict since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, a record in a country where capital punishment is in decline elsewhere.

Kimberly McCarthy, 52, was declared dead by lethal injection at 6:37 p.m. (23:37) GMT in the “Walls Unit,” a red brick prison in the small town of Huntsville, prison officials said. After 14 years on death row, time stopped for the former crack addict who was condemned to death for the savage murder of 71-year-old retired college professor, Dorothy Booth in 1997.

McCarthy fatally stabbed Booth with a butcher’s knife and beat her with a candelabra before, police said, she cut off Booth’s finger to take her wedding ring. “As the lethal drugs began to take effect her last words were ‘God is good,’“ the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a press release.

McCarthy, who is Black, received two last-minute reprieves in January and April due to allegations of racial discrimination during the selection of what became her all-white jury. But after a Texas appeals court refused to reopen the case, she ran out of both options and time.