HUNTSVILLE, Texas – A Texas man convicted of killing a police informant two decades ago was executed Tuesday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments that he was too mentally impaired to qualify for the death penalty.

Marvin Wilson, 54, was pronounced dead at 6:27 p.m., 14 minutes after his lethal injection began at the state prison in Huntsville. Wilson’s attorneys had argued that he should have been ineligible for capital punishment because of his low IQ.

Before the lethal drug was administered, Wilson smiled and raised his head from the death-chamber gurney, nodding to his three sisters and son as they watched through a window a few feet away.

“Y’all do understand that I came here a sinner and leaving a saint,” he said. “Take me home Jesus, take me home Lord, take me home Lord!”

In their appeal to the Supreme Court, Wilson’s attorneys had pointed to a psychological test conducted in 2004 that pegged his IQ at 61, below the generally accepted minimum competency standard of 70. But lower courts agreed with state attorneys, who argued that Wilson’s claim was based on a single possibly faulty test and that his mental impairment claim wasn’t supported by other tests and assessments over the years.

Shooting in Ark. police car probed

Police in Arkansas are investigating whether a man fatally shot himself in the head as he sat in the backseat of a patrol car with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Chavis Carter, 21, died after Jonesboro police stopped a truck in which he was riding July 28 and learned he had an outstanding arrest warrant related to a drug charge. Carter was searched twice, handcuffed and put into the back of the patrol car, according to a police report.

Officers a short time later saw Carter slumped over in the backseat and covered in blood, according to the report, which concluded he had managed to conceal a handgun with which he shot himself.

Jonesboro Police Chief Michael Yates said Tuesday it appeared Carter shot himself in the head, but his department is investigating the incident, which the chief described as “very unusual.”

Ohio man brings weapons to theater

A defense attorney says an Ohio man who brought a gun, ammunition and several knives to a showing of the latest Batman movie did so for protection and out of fear following a deadly Colorado shooting.

Matthew Bruce, an attorney for 37-year-old Scott A. Smith, says his client had no intention of causing harm or panic when he brought the weapons to a Saturday showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” in a Westlake theater. Police say a theater manager and an off-duty police officer working security stopped Smith and found the weapons inside a bag they thought looked suspicious.

Hurricane Ernesto hits land in Mexico

Hundreds of tourists evacuated beach resorts along Mexico’s Caribbean coast as Hurricane Ernesto closed in for a Tuesday night landfall near Mexico’s border with Belize, bringing the threat of powerful winds and torrential rains.

Ernesto strengthened from a tropical storm earlier in the day, and the U.S. National Hurricane Center said it had sustained winds of 85 mph by early evening and was moving west-northwest at 18 mph.