"God bless everybody in here," Boyd said in his last words to witnesses separated from his death chamber by a double-paned glass partition.

Boyd, who was 57, died at 2:15 a.m. (0715 GMT) at Central Prison in North Carolina's state capital, Raleigh, spokeswoman Pamela Walker of the Department of Corrections said.

Boyd, a Vietnam war veteran with a history of alcohol abuse, was sentenced to death for the murder in 1988 of his wife and father-in-law committed in front of two of his children.

His execution drew world attention because of its symbolism since the US Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to be brought back in 1976 after a nine-year unofficial moratorium.

Boyd's lawyer Thomas Maher told reporters the execution had not made the world better or safer.

"This 1,000th execution is a milestone, a milestone we should all be ashamed of," Maher said.

Boyd was wheeled into the death chamber strapped down on a gurney and injected with a fatal mix of three drugs.

Boyd seemed "sort of resigned," said witness Elyse Ashburn. After he spoke his last words and the drugs were injected, "He just looked immediately like he had gone to sleep," she said.

Choking back tears, daughter-in-law Kathy Smith said Boyd "was a very kind man with a good heart. He would have given the shirt off his back to anybody in need." Several of Boyd's relatives also sobbed.