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A prison guard doing routine checks found a 70-year-old San Quentin inmate dead in his death row cell early Saturday, prison officials said. George Hatton Smithey apparently hanged himself with his bed sheets, Lt. Sam Robinson said. Smithey had been on death row since July 1989 for the 1988 murder and attempted rape of Cheryl Anne Nesler during the commission of an armed robbery and burglary, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement. Earlier this week a Calaveras County Superior Court judge reduced Smithey's sentence to life without the possibility of parole after prosecutors determined he...

Alonzo Hardy's confession paved the way for the exonerations of two Dallas County men wrongly convicted in a 1997 murder. But a court filing now claims Hardy was lying and promised money when he said he and another man were the real killers. Defense attorneys for the man Hardy claims was his accomplice, Don Michael Anderson, say Hardy was offered cash by the sister of one of the men originally arrested and later cleared in the murder. They say it was an elaborate scheme to spring the men from prison. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, a Democrat up for...

Actress and model Victoria Redstall believes an Oklahoma death row inmate set for execution in August is actually innocent. Prosecutors say Redstall is wrong and the twice-convicted man should be put to death. A blond British bombshell once portrayed as a serial killer's groupie has taken up the cause of saving an Oklahoma death row inmate from execution. Victoria Redtall - an actress, model, television host, weather girl, producer and game show contestant — vehemently repudiates the groupie label, saying she is an investigative journalist who has proved Jeffrey David Matthews is innocent. "I've made it my life's mission," Redstall...

Irving Davis, convicted of raping and killing a 15-year-old El Paso girl, has asked a Texas appeals court to throw out his death sentence, arguing that jurors should not have been told about his new religion — Satanism. The revelation, defense lawyers argue, violated Davis' free exercise of religion and improperly prejudiced jurors against the 27-year-old inmate. Prosecutors counter that allegiance to the Church of Satan was relevant information for jurors, who had to determine whether Davis should be put to death as a continuing threat to society.

Joseph Paul Franklin awaits his date with death. ​Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is tired of Joseph Paul Franklin, the white supremacist and serial killer who claimed responsibility for shooting Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, breathing his state's air. Koster wants the Missouri Supreme Court to set an execution date for Franklin now that the U.S. Supreme Court has kicked out Clemons v. Crawford. The man who claims he and paralyzed Larry Flynt is on death row in Missouri. ​"Today's decision clears up any lingering ambiguities related to the constitutionality of Missouri's death penalty protocols," Koster said today in a...

Sometime after midnight Friday, Ronnie Lee Gardner is to be strapped into a chair in the execution chamber at the state prison in Draper, Utah. A black hood is to be slipped over the bald head of the 49-year-old convicted killer, if he wishes. A small circular target will be pinned over his heart. It has been 14 years since rifles were last fired in a state execution. Barring a last-minute reprieve, Gardner will be only the third person to die before a firing squad in Utah  or anywhere else in the nation  since the death penalty was...

POUND, Va. (AP) -- For seven days, Robert Gleason Jr. begged correctional officers and counselors at Wallens Ridge State Prison to move his new cellmate. The constant singing, screaming and obnoxious behavior were too much, and Gleason knew he was ready to snap. On the eighth day - May 8, 2009 - correctional officers found 63-year-old Harvey Gray Watson Jr. bound, gagged, beaten and strangled.....

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is set to execute a convicted killer by firing squad in June after a judge agreed Friday to the inmate's request for the method, renewing a debate over what critics see as an antiquated, Old West-style of justice. Rest of story

SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah is set to execute a convicted killer by firing squad after a judge agreed Friday to the inmate's request for the method, renewing a debate over what critics see as an antiquated, Old West-style of justice. Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, was given the choice of being killed by lethal injection or shot by a five-man team of executioners firing from a set of matched rifles, a rarely used relic that harkens back to Utah's territorial history. "I would like the firing squad, please," Gardner told State court Judge Robin Reese Friday morning, after Reese told...

Since losing what may well be her last appeal in September, Linda Carty has had to deal with a lot of unsettling comments. 'They've come both from other inmates and guards,' she says. 'I hear them asking, "How come she's still here? How come she hasn't been executed?" All I can do is ignore it. 'Since the appeal, they've moved me to a cell that feels like it's 115 degrees inside. My nose bleeds every day - sometimes I get through four T-shirts. The doctor said the reason is the heat.' Carty, 51, who spoke last week to The Mail...

Kristie Reed was on the basement floor, her throat and wrists slashed. Her older sister, Stacie, was upstairs, dead from a stab wound to the heart. When police reached Kristie, who was then 14 years old, an officer leaned in and asked who had done this to her. Kristie mouthed two words: "Paul Powell." On Thursday night, more than 11 years later, Paul Warner Powell, 31, was executed in Virginia's electric chair. He was declared dead at 9:09 p.m. The Jan. 29, 1999, murder of one sister and the rape and near-slaying of the other in Manassas were among the...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Associated Press) -- The state of Texas has executed a Dallas-area man convicted of fatally shooting a Brazilian engineer. Thirty-two-year-old Michael Sigala received a lethal injection Tuesday night for the August 2000 fatal shooting of 28-year-old Kleber Santos, whose job had brought him to Texas shortly after he was married. Santos' wife was also killed in the attack at their apartment in the Dallas suburb of Plano. Sigala was charged with the wife's slaying but was not tried.

FLORENCE, Ariz. — The oldest death row inmate in the U.S. has died of natural causes at age 94. An Arizona Department of Corrections spokesman says Viva Leroy Nash died late Friday at the state's prison complex in Florence. Nash was still on death row, but spokesman Barrett Marson said Sunday he did not know if Nash died in his cell or in a medical facility at the prison. Nash was born in 1915 and had a criminal record dating to the 1930s. He spent 25 years in prison for shooting a Connecticut police officer in 1947, and was sentenced...

FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) -- The oldest death row inmate in the U.S. has died of natural causes at age 94. An Arizona Department of Corrections spokesman says Viva Leroy Nash died late Friday at the state's prison complex in Florence. Nash was still on death row, but spokesman Barrett Marson said Sunday he did not know if Nash died in his cell or in a medical facility at the prison. Nash was born in 1915 and had a criminal record dating to the 1930s. He spent 25 years in prison for shooting a Connecticut police officer in 1947....

<p>The oldest death row inmate in the U.S. has died of natural causes at age 94.</p> <p>An Arizona Department of Corrections spokesman says Viva Leroy Nash died late Friday at the state's prison complex in Florence.</p> <p>Nash was still on death row, but spokesman Barrett Marson said Sunday he did not know if Nash died in his cell or in a medical facility at the prison.</p>

Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed -- also known as Chemical Ali -- was executed Monday, an Iraqi government spokesman said. He was hanged after having been convicted on 13 counts of killings and genocide, Ali al-Dabagh said.

San Quentin death-row inmate Justin Helzer, convicted in 2004 of murdering five people, including the daughter of blues guitarist Elvin Bishop, tried to kill himself and is hospitalized in critical condition, sources confirmed Friday. The sources said Helzer apparently tried to kill himself by jamming pens in each of his eyes. Although he didn't kill himself, the sources said Helzer did succeed in paralyzing himself on the right side and causing a level of brain damage that has yet to be determined.

Gov. Bob McDonnell may have ended plans to transfer to Germany a killer serving two life terms in Virginia. The issue, however, might not be over. Before he left office last week, then-Gov. Timothy M. Kaine approved a request from the German government asking the U.S. Department of Justice to transfer Jens Soering, 43, to his native Germany.

Anti-death penalty movement wooing conservatives LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Roy Brown seems like a rarity — a conservative who's against the death penalty. But to Brown, a state senator and the 2008 Republican nominee for governor of Montana, the philosophy aligns perfectly with conservative ideology. He's one of the more high-profile figures reaching out to other social and fiscal conservatives, hoping to create a bipartisan movement against capital punishment. "I believe that life is precious from the womb to a natural death," Brown said. The Roman Catholic church has long been an organized and vocal critic of the death penalty, but...

Saddam Hussein's notorious cousin "Chemical Ali" has been sentenced to death by hanging for his involvement in a poison gas attack on the city of Halabja. Families of some of the 5,000 Kurds killed in the 1988 attack cheered when the guilty verdict against Ali Hassan al-Majid was handed down Sunday. Other officials in Saddam's regime, including former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim al-Taie, also received jail terms at the Iraqi High Tribunal. The brutal attack on Halabja close to the Iranian border 22 years ago killed mostly women and children through a series of mustard and nerve gas bombings by...