HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- A Texas man was put to death Wednesday in the first execution of 2017, hours after the United States Supreme Court denied a request for a last-minute stay.

Christopher Wilkins received a lethal injection Wednesday night for killing two people in Fort Worth in 2005.

Wilkins shot them after trying to buy a rock of crack cocaine that ended up being a piece of gravel. 

Wilkins was released from prison in 2005 after serving time for a federal gun possession conviction. He drove a stolen truck to Fort Worth, where he befriended Willie Freeman, 40, and Mike Silva, 33.

Court records show Freeman and his drug supplier, who wasn't identified, duped Wilkins into paying $20 for a piece of gravel that he thought was a rock of crack cocaine. Wilkins said he shot Freeman on Oct. 28, 2005, after Freeman laughed about the scam, then he shot Silva because he was there. Wilkins' fingerprints were found in Silva's wrecked SUV and a pentagram matching one of Wilkins' numerous tattoos had been carved into the hood.

Wilkins also testified that the day before the shootings, he shot and killed another man, Gilbert Vallejo, 47, outside a Fort Worth bar in a dispute over a pay phone, and about a week later used a stolen car to try to run down two people because he believed one of them had taken his sunglasses.

During his 2008 murder trial he described the slayings to jurors and said he didn't care if they gave him the death penalty. 

"I know they are bad decisions," Wilkins told jurors of his actions. "I make them anyway."

While awaiting trial, authorities discovered he had swallowed a handcuff key and fashioned a knife to be used in an escape attempt.

Wilkins' lawyers had argued that he had poor legal help at his trial and during earlier appeals and that the courts improperly refused to authorize money for a more thorough investigation of those claims to support other appeals and a clemency petition.

Texas currently has eight more executions scheduled through June, including two - Kosoul Chanthakoummane and Terry Edwards - by the end of January.