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The Obama administration has launched a quiet campaign over the past two months to seize from local officials a key drug used in lethal injections -- part of a spreading investigation that has contributed to a de facto death penalty freeze in several states. The investigation stems from concerns about the overseas source of the drug, though some question whether those concerns make a handy excuse to slow the pace of executions. "States have death penalty laws, and the federal government is trying to make it harder for the states to execute those laws," Saunders said.

PHILADELPHIA -- A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered a new sentencing hearing for convicted police killer and death-row activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, finding for a second time that the death-penalty instructions given to the jury at his 1982 trial were potentially misleading. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals told prosecutors to conduct the new sentencing hearing for the former Black Panther within six months or agree to a life sentence. Abu-Jamal's first-degree murder conviction still stands in the fatal shooting of Officer Daniel Faulkner, who was white.

On the eve of his execution, a Texas death row is saying that he does not want to be the state’s guinea pig for the use of a new drug for lethal injection. Cleve Foster, who is accused of murdering Sudanese refugee Nyaneur Pal in 2002, is set to be executed on Tuesday, but he doesn’t want to be the first Texan to be executed with the new drug pentobarbital.

Prison officials say an inmate at San Quentin State Prison has died of natural causes while awaiting execution for a 1994 slaying in Sacramento County. The state corrections department says Richard Ray Parson died at an outside hospital Monday. He was 67.

Shirley Lynette Ledford was a pretty, 16-year-old teenage girl just coming into her own in 1979, the year she was kidnapped and murdered. She would have turned 48 this year. I got to thinking about her Wednesday after reading another story about how we can't seem to come up with a humane way to thin out the waiting list on San Quentin's death row without causing murderers too much pain and suffering. It's a hard argument to swallow when you know the pain and suffering Ledford went through at the end of her short life. I can still hear her...

The Indian government Wednesday said it would not abolish death penalty, but that capital punishment is awarded only to criminals involved in heinous crime considered as rarest of rare cases. "There is no proposal under consideration of the government to abolish capital punishment," Minister of State for Home Affairs Mullappally Ramachandran told the Indian Parliament in a written reply. Stating that since 2007, the UN General Assembly has adopted three resolutions titled "Moratorium on the use of the death penalty", the minister said that all these resolutions have been passed after a vote. But, he said that 141 countries had...

The state of Oklahoma is planning to execute death row inmates with drugs intended for use on animals. Lawmakers want to switch away from the only brand of anaesthetic that has been used in the US for lethal injections because there is not enough to go around. The replacement is likely to attract controversy because it is currently used by vets to anesthetise animals for operations. Other states are watching closely and may well follow suit, but such a move is likely to face a challenge from human rights groups to ensure that it is safe to use.

Excuse the vanity please. The Rats remind of a death row inmate who gets a 3 month stay as he's walking to the gas chamber. You can tell they fully expected to lose the Senate and maybe 80 seats or more in the House. They were scared. In a few days they'll again begin to realize their dire plight.

The state of Arizona executed a convicted murderer on Tuesday night despite objections from attorneys that the state would use a non-approved drug from overseas for the lethal injection. Just hours before Jeffrey Landrigan's death, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to lift a stay issued by a federal judge to halt the execution. "There is no evidence in the record to suggest that the drug obtained from a foreign source is unsafe," the Supreme Court said Due to a U.S. shortage, the state turned to a non-FDA approved drug. It was later revealed that the source was the U.K., although...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delayed the state's first execution since 2006 by nearly two days Monday to allow more time for courts to consider the condemned inmate's appeals. Albert Greenwood Brown is now scheduled to die by lethal injection at 9 p.m. Thursday, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

BREAKING: Schwarzenegger delays California's first execution in nearly five years

Jarratt, Va. (CNN) -- Teresa Lewis, a 41-year-old grandmother, met with family members and a spiritual adviser Thursday, hours before she was scheduled to be the first woman executed in Virginia in nearly a century. Lewis is set to die by lethal injection at 9 p.m. ET at Greensville Correctional Center. The victims' family members are to witness the execution, state Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said. The death row inmate pleaded guilty in the 2002 slayings of her husband and stepson in their rural home near Danville, Virginia, about 145 miles from Richmond.

RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia was moving forward Thursday with its first execution of a woman in nearly a century amid appeals from the European Union and repercussions that reached as far away as Iran. SNIP Teresa Lewis, 41, was scheduled to die by injection at 9 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt for the October 2002 hired killings of her husband and stepson. To procure the hit men, prosecutors said, she used sex, cash and a promised cut of the insurance benefits the killings would reap her. The U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Bob McDonnell declined to intervene. All...

Virginia is slated to execute Teresa Lewis by lethal injection on Thursday, The Associated Press reported. The 41-year-old woman was sentenced to die after pleading guilty to capital murder for hiring two men to kill her husband and stepson so she could collect a $250,000 life insurance policy. Rodney Fuller and Lewis' lover, Matthew Shallenberger, entered her home on Oct. 30, 2002, and fatally shot Julian Clifton, Jr., 51, and Charles Lewis, 25. Teresa then rummaged through her husband's pockets for money while he was dying. She also waited nearly an hour before calling 911. The triggermen were sentenced to...

A man facing the death penalty in Fairfax County for two murders, and who was convicted of a third in California, is now a suspect in two more California homicides committed in the same fashion, his attorneys revealed in court Monday. If Alfredo R. Prieto is charged with the two slayings in Riverside County, Calif., he then will have been charged with six homicides and four rapes -- allegedly all of them committed at the time of the killings -- in slightly more than two years between 1988 and 1990. He has not been charged with the most recently revealed...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Lacking enough of the anesthetic essential to the cocktail of lethal drugs administered during executions, several US states are being forced to postpone the procedure until early next year. At the heart of the drug supply problem is Hospira, the only pharmaceutical company that produces the anesthetic sodium thiopental. "We are working to get it back on the market and we anticipate we will by 2011," Hospira spokesman told AFP. The US Food and Drug Administration does not approve the drug's use in lethal injections and Hospira does not sell it for that purpose, though prison officials...

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.