Tennessee executes man for 1985 rape, murder of seven-year-old girl

Billy Irick, 59, who had spent more than three decades on death row, was put to death at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Tylee Tracer said. Pronounced dead at 7:48 p.m. Central time, he became the 15th inmate executed this year in the United States and the first in Tennessee since 2009. Irick had been a boarder in the home where the girl lived with her mother, stepfather and siblings.