Last night, Willie Tyrone Trottie, who was convicted of a 1993 double murder, was executed in Texas after spending 20 years on death row. Trottie wrote us a letter earlier this year as part of our "Letters from Death Row" series.

Trottie's crime was undoubtedly brutal. As was his life. In his letter to us, he wrote of an alcoholic and abusive mother, time spent in foster care, and called live on death row "A LIVING HELL."

After Trottie was executed last night, Brian Stull, an ACLU lawyer who works on capital punishment cases, sent out a note to his colleagues that read in part: "Last night, the State of Texas strapped a fellow human being to a gurney, and pumped his blood full of poison until he died. It was their 8 th execution this year, the fifth of a person of color. This person's name was Willie Trottie. His last recorded words were an apology to the victims of his crime...

"When Texas snuffed out his light, he was 45, and still had contributions to make to this world. So when your energy wavers today, as you take on the many tasks that make up our work against the death penalty, give a little thought to T-rock, the many who have come before him, and those that will follow him until our job is done."

Willie Tyrone Trottie is the fifth one of our death row correspondents to be executed. You can read all of our "Letters From Death Row" here.