The Associated Press

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - A man who dropped his appeals was executed Tuesday for bludgeoning and stabbing his sleeping parents with a hammer and kitchen knives after they hid his SUV keys so he couldn't go buy drugs.

Scott Mink's execution by injection - three years after his conviction - was the quickest an Ohio inmate's death sentence was carried out since the state re-enacted the death penalty in 1981. It also came a week after the execution of another man who gave up the fight to stop his sentence, Stephen Vrabel of Youngstown.

Mink, 40, was pronounced dead at 10:27 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.

"Thank you for giving me the chance to make a final statement. I have made peace with my family and God," Mink said before he died.

He gave the thumbs up sign and mouthed "I loved you" several times to family members who witnessed the execution.

Mink was calm and expressionless as prison staff probed his arms for about 18 minutes for veins in which to place the shunts where drugs to stop breathing and the heart enter the body.

Mink pleaded guilty to killing his parents during a night of drinking and doing drugs on Sept. 19, 2000. He grabbed a ball-peen hammer from his father's toolbox and beat William and Sheila Mink with it until it broke. He also struck them with cutting boards and stabbed them with kitchen knives.

Mink, who never married and lived with his parents, was enraged that they had hidden the keys to his SUV to keep him from buying drugs.