An American prisoner who dropped all appeals of his case was executed late Thursday in the western state of Nevada for strangling a Russian immigrant in a motel room in 1999. Terry Jess Dennis looked straight upward after being hoisted atop a gurney, never turning to witnesses, and closed his eyes before the lethal injection was administered. He made no final statement, prison spokesman Fritz Schlottman said. No members of the victim's family were among the seven official witnesses. Dennis was convicted of killing 51-year-old Ilona Strumanis, a Russian immigrant.
