STARKE, Fla. -- A man who killed an 11-year-old girl and two fellow death row inmates was executed by lethal injection Wednesday after dropping his appeals and volunteering to die.

Rigoberto Sanchez-Velasco, 43, who came to Miami from Cuba in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, had confessed to the girl's murder but then denied it in a statement he wrote out and gave to a priest the night before his execution.

"I did not commit the crime for which I will die. It does not matter who believes me and who won't believe me," he said. He added: "I cannot call myself totally innocent because I have committed all kinds of sins, including murder."