More than a year since a South Dakota death row inmate asked to be executed for kidnapping a friend and beating him to death, the admitted killer may finally get his wish next week when the state carries out its first death sentence in 60 years.

Elijah Page sent a handwritten letter to the governor in 2006, asking to waive his appeals and proceed with the sentence that a judge handed him in 2001 for the brutal murder of Chester Allan Poage, 19.

Page, who was also 19 at the time, and three co-defendants admitted to kidnapping Poage on March 12, 2000, so they could steal property from the Spearfish home he shared with his mother and sister, who were on vacation.

The men said they forced Poage to drink a mixture of hydrochloric acid, crushed pills and beer before bringing him out to the snow-covered woods of rural South Dakota, where they tortured him for nearly three hours and left him to die.

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Though the trio's accounts varied regarding who did what, the group told police they stabbed Poage, slit his throat, kicked and stoned him in the head repeatedly before leaving him in a creek, where a passerby discovered his remains nearly a month later.

Chester Allan Poage in the fall of 1997

After leaving Poage, the group returned to the home he shared with his mother and sister and stole his PlayStation, stereo equipment and jewelry.

During the week of July 9, in accordance with state law, the warden of the South Dakota State Penitentiary will announce the exact time and date of Page's execution no more than 48 hours beforehand.

Page, now 25, was originally scheduled to be executed Aug. 29, 2006. With just a few hours to spare, his execution was stayed until the legislature revised the lethal injection protocol.

Earlier this year, the legislature updated the protocol to provide for the use of a three-drug cocktail instead of the two-drug method that was written into law in 1984, but has never been used.

Additionally, the new statute designates the warden as the official to determine which substances to use and whether to use a two- or three-drug cocktail.

Because Page and the four other inmates on death row were sentenced before the revised protocol, they will be able to choose which they prefer.

As the first execution since 1947, Page's execution marks a series of milestones in the short history of capital punishment in South Dakota.

Only 11 others have been put to death since South Dakota entered the Union in 1889. The most recent execution took place in 1947, when George Sitts was sent to the electric chair for killing two lawmen.

A jury sentenced Darrell Hoadley to life for his part in Poage's slaying.

Until 1992, when Donald Moeller was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 9-year-old Becky O'Connell, the state's death row stood vacant for nearly three decades, after the death sentence of a member of the American Indian Movement was commuted to life.

The relatively low number of death sentences handed down seems consistent with the low crime rate in South Dakota, where 18 murders occurred in 2005, according to FBI statistics.

"Prosecutors seek the death penalty, but part of it is getting 12 people to agree on it," said Sara Reburn, public information officer for the office of South Dakota Attorney General, Larry Long. "They just don't hand them down very often."

Earlier this year, a Sioux Falls jury spared Daphne Wright a death sentence for cutting up her deaf lesbian lover with a chainsaw and spreading her remains throughout the area.

Page, originally from Athens, Texas, will not only be the first inmate executed under the revised statute, he will be the first to undergo lethal injection.

Page and his co-defendant, Briley Piper, both chose to forgo a jury trial and instead pleaded guilty to first-degree felony murder, robbery, kidnapping and grand theft in 2000. A third co-defendant, Darrell Hoadley, stood trial and was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison by a jury.

After a five-day hearing, in which Page was portrayed by his lawyers as an abused child whose parents prostituted him and his sister in exchange for drugs, a judge sentenced him to death, remarking that he would not want to see a dog subjected to the treatment Page endured as a child.

In post-sentencing appeals, lawyers for both Page and Piper, two of four inmates on South Dakota's death row, argued that their sentences were disproportionate to the punishment Hoadley received for his involvement. Piper's appeals are still pending.