Execution is state’s first in 60 years

? A 25-year-old man was executed by lethal injection Wednesday for the torture and slaying of a teenager who was forced to drink hydrochloric acid during a robbery of his home. It was the state’s first execution in 60 years.

Elijah Page gave up his appeals and asked to die for the 2000 murder of Chester Allan Poage, 19, who was also stabbed, kicked and bashed with large rocks in a torture session that lasted two to three hours.

Page, of Athens, Texas, died at 10:11 p.m. from a lethal injection administered at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.

Page is among a handful of people his age or younger put to death since capital punishment was reinstated in the United States in 1979. His case also is unusual because a judge, not a jury, imposed a death sentence – and he asked to die.

The last execution in South Dakota was in 1947, when George Sitts died in the electric chair for killing two law enforcement officers.