Southern US state executes first inmate in two years

This January 20, 2016, photo provided by the Alabama Department of Corrections shows Christopher Eugene Brooks, convicted of the 1992 rape and beating death of a woman.

Alabama: The southern US state of Alabama on Thursday put to death a man convicted of murder, the first execution in the state since 2013.

Christopher Eugene Brooks, 43, was killed by lethal injection for raping a woman and beating her to death with a barbell in 1992, local media reported.

State Prison Commissioner Jeff Dunn told the Alabama news Al.com that the execution using the controversial sedative drug midazolam "went exactly as planned".

According to the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, Brooks is the first person executed in the state since July 2013.

Brooks is also the third person put to death in the United States this year, after executions in Texas and Florida.

Twenty-eight people were executed in the United States in 2015, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center.