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A legal team is going to New York to prevent the use of evidence provided by Germany in seeking a death penalty. Berlin wants to ensure that promises made by the US are kept if the suspects are found guilty. Germany, which does not have a death penalty, provided evidence for the trial on the condition that it could not be used to support a death sentence. Several members of the al Qaeda cell that planned and executed the attacks of September 11 were previously based in the northern German city of Hamburg.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Inmate Robert Lee Thompson was executed Thursday evening for his part in a fatal Houston store holdup after the Texas governor rejected a parole board's recommendation to spare him because he wasn't the gunman. Thompson, 34, was an accomplice to triggerman Sammy Butler who gunned down 29-year-old store clerk Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed 13 years ago. Butler received life in prison. A jury gave Thompson death. Thompson's lawyer told the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles Thompson's punishment wasn't fair and the panel voted 5-2 Wednesday to recommend his sentence be commuted to life. Gov. Rick Perry...

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) on Tuesday rejected clemency for Larry "Bill" Elliott, a former military intelligence officer who killed a Woodbridge couple in their home in 2001, paving the way for his execution at 9 p.m. Tuesday. Elliott was twice convicted of killing Robert Finch, 30, and Dana Thrall, 25, who were shot several times in their townhouse. Prosecutors argued that Elliott was obsessed with Finch's ex-girlfriend and that Elliott killed him as a way to win her over. Thrall, who was living with Finch, walked in on his slaying and was then beaten and killed. A first jury's...

"The General Assembly today adopted... a moratorium on executions to be established in all States that still maintain the death penalty..." United Nations. "From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death... I feel... obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed." Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, appointed by President Nixon and author of the Roe v Wade decision. "I cannot say it more eloquently than Justice Blackmun... I must act... today I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates... I will sleep well knowing I made the right decision."...

RICHMOND, Va. - John Allen Muhammad was executed Tuesday night for the sniper attacks in 2002 that left 10 dead and spread such fear people were afraid to go shopping, cut grass or pump gas. The three-week killing spree in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., was carried out with a teenage accomplice who is serving life in prison without parole. Muhammad, 48, died by injection at 9:11 p.m. EST after he exhausted his court appeals and Gov. Tim Kaine denied clemency. Muhammad's attorneys earlier had asked Kaine to commute his sentence to life in prison because they said he was...

JARRATT, Va. -- John Allen Muhammad, the sniper who kept the Washington region paralyzed by fear for three weeks as he and a young accomplice gunned down people at random, was executed Tuesday night by lethal injection.

Here is video of a Virginia Prison Spokesman giving a detailed preview of the upcoming execution of D.C. Sniper Mastermind John Allen Muhammad, who will be executed tonight at 9:00 PM ET. . . . (VIDEO)

JARRATT, Va. (AP) - Sniper John Allen Muhammad is meeting with relatives in the hours before his execution and one of his attorneys described the convicted killer as fearless. Attorney J. Wyndal Gordon said Muhammad had no regrets and would die with dignity Tuesday night in Virginia. Gordon also insisted that Muhammad was innocent. Gordon says Muhammad met with one of his sons before the execution and then reminisced with the attorney about the time he spent with his son before Muhammad went to prison.

D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Tuesday night in Virginia. Muhammad was given the death penalty for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers, who was shot while pumping gas. In total, Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, fatally shot 13 people in the Washington, D.C., area in the Fall of 2002

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) denied clemency for John Allen Muhammad on Tuesday, clearing the way for the sniper to be executed by lethal injection at 9 p.m. and putting an end to one of the most trying local criminal cases in U.S. history. Muhammad, 48, was convicted of capital murder in the slaying of Dean Harold Meyers on Oct. 9, 2002, at a gas station outside of Manassas, part of a spree that left 10 people dead in the Washington area and included shootings in several other states. A jury in Virginia Beach, where the trial was moved...

Beltway Sniper Shootings FR THREAD ARCHIVES This thread is for everyone, be sure to bookmark it. If you create a new thread, feel free to post a link to it here as well. It will be updated as often as possible. Maryland Area Prayer Thread: Pray for Metro area Freepers and Families If anyone has time today and is so inclined, you can listen to the Prince George County or Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Dispatches on the internet at http://www.sconfire.com/livedispatch.htm. The links are on the right side about halfway down. I will try to be tuning in through out...

t - 3 hrs and counting down..

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has cleared the way for the execution of sniper John Allen Muhammad. Kaine denied Muhammad's clemency request Tuesday. Muhammad is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday night at a Virginia prison for killing Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station during a three-week spree that left 10 people dead in 2002 across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Hello, Mike Ruane here to talk about the DC sniper case and answer your questions. _______________________

MOUNTAIN HOME, IDAHO -- The setting sun is streaming in the living room window of Marion Lewis's house as he puts aside his cigarette and starts telling the story of the day his daughter was murdered. break He remembers the day, Oct. 3, 2002, when Lori Lewis Rivera was shot to death by the D.C. snipers at a gas station in Kensington. Two thousand miles away, her father was oblivious, out in the wilderness running a giant rock-crushing machine. Lewis stares at the floor as he recalls it, kneading his beefy hands and wiping away tears with his fingers. break...

Seven years after he and his teenage sidekick terrorised the Washington area with a three-week killing spree using a high-powered rifle, John Allen Muhammad — the “Beltway sniper” — is due to be executed tonight by lethal injection. The execution is reviving memories for the millions of people in Washington, Virginia and Maryland who spent October 2002 crouched in their cars as they pumped petrol, ducking and weaving across open spaces and running into schools with their children, glancing anxiously at nearby woods. Muhammad, a former soldier and 41 at the time, and Lee Boyd Malvo, then 17, triggered the...

The Supreme Court Monday denied John Allen Muhammad's request to stay his execution, clearing the way for Virginia to put to death the man who terrorized the Washington region as the Beltway Sniper. Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor objected to the court's haste, saying it "highlights once again the perversity of executing inmates before their appeals process have been fully concluded." Stevens, writing for the three, said Virginia had short-circuited the process by scheduling Muhammad's execution for Tuesday night, earlier than the court would normally have reviewed his petition for the court to take his...

Convicted Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad is filing last-minute appeals, trying to avoid a Tuesday appointment in Virginia's death chamber. The legal scramble is reviving memories for countless in the D.C. region who lived through the three weeks in October 2002 when Muhammad and his ward, Lee Boyd Malvo, went on a rampage that terrorized the capital region. Picking out strangers at random, they opened fire from a hole cut in an old car, leaving notes behind to taunt police and to celebrate the carnage they inflicted. By the time the pair was finished, 10 were dead, three were wounded...

RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi court of cassation upheld a ruling to behead and crucify a 22-year-old man convicted of raping five children and leaving one of them to die in the desert, newspapers reported on Tuesday. International rights groups have accused the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, of applying draconian justice, beheading murderers, rapists and drug traffickers in public.

/begin my excerpts Picketing N. Korean Defector Bumping Face-to-Face into N. Korean Ambassador Ma Young-ae, N. Korean defector and artist, now residing in U.S. and heading (Christian) N. Korean Refugee Mission, was picketing with Choi Eun-chol, the (mission's) administrative manager, in front of N. Korea's Mission at U.N.. They were urging the International Criminal Court to indict Kim Jong-il, when they met face-to-face with (N. Korean) Ambassador (to U.N.) Shin Sun-ho. When she confronted him, he and his assistant gave her a brief look and headed for U.N. Headquarter. She followed them, with a new sign board saying, "Kim Jong-il,...

The mastermind of the sniper attacks that terrorized Washington-area residents in October 2002 will die by lethal injection next month, a Virginia corrections official said Tuesday. The state will give convicted killer John Allen Muhammad a lethal injection because he declined to choose between that and electrocution. "So under the Code of Virginia it defaults to lethal injection," said state Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor. A prisoner has until 15 days before the execution to decide on which method, according to Virginia law.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - The mastermind of the 2002 Washington, DC-area sniper attacks will die by lethal injection next month, Virginia officials said Tuesday. John Allen Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, so under state law the method defaults to lethal injection, Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a string of shootings. The three-week killing spree in October 2002 left 10 dead in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Ohio was on track this year to execute a record number of inmates. One botched execution and several lawsuits later, the death penalty is temporarily on hold there. The latest challenge: The state can't find medical professionals willing to advise it on the best way to put condemned inmates to death because of ethical and professional rules. The rules—which generally prohibit doctors, nurses and others from involvement in capital punishment—are deterring those professionals from speaking publicly or privately about alternatives to the state's lethal injection process, Attorney General Richard Cordray said in a court filing. "A...

Exile groups report the deaths of four Tibetans linked to last year's riots. Chinese authorities have carried out their first executions of Tibetans in connection with the deadly riots that swept Lhasa last year, according to exile groups. As the first reported judicial killings in the region for six years, the news has prompted overseas protests and concerns that proper legal procedures were not followed. The Chinese state media have yet to confirm the executions. However, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, based in Dharamsala in northern India, said it had reports that they took place early on...

Lawrence Reynolds had been scheduled to be executed on Thursday Two more executions have been delayed in the US state of Ohio, three weeks after an attempt to put another man to death by lethal injection failed. On 15 September, the execution of Romell Broom was abandoned after Ohio officials failed to find a vein. Judges halted Thursday's execution in the state of Lawrence Reynolds, 43. The state governor then delayed next month's execution of Darryl Durr, until a judge hears arguments over problems with the injection process. The execution of Broom - convicted of rape and murder - is...

A federal appeals court Monday halted the execution of an inmate three weeks after problems with a lethal-injection attempt. A panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled 2-1 to grant the request of 43-year-old Lawrence Reynolds Jr., who had been sentenced to die for strangling his 67-year-old neighbor during a 1994 robbery. On Sept. 15, Gov. Ted Strickland stopped the lethal injection of Romell Broom after state executioners struggled for two hours to find a usable vein. Mr. Broom's execution is on hold while his attorneys prepare for a Nov. 30 federal-court hearing. They argue...

"AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday defended his removal of three commissioners looking into whether the state used bad science to execute an innocent man, suggesting too much was being made of his move. On Wednesday, Perry decided to replace three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, including its chairman, just two days before it conducted a hearing to examine the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. The new chairman canceled the meeting."

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said Monday he can't think of any reason he would stop the execution of Washington, D.C.-area sniper John Allen Muhammad. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 killing spree that left 10 dead in the nation's capital, Virginia and Maryland. "I know of nothing in this case now that would suggest that there is any credible claim of innocence or that there was anything procedurally wrong with the prosecution," Kaine said on his monthly call-in radio show on WTOP. Kaine said he would review Muhammad's petition for clemency when he...

Suspected drug hitmen burst into a Mexican radio station and shot dead a journalist in front of his colleagues in the latest brazen attack on the media, authorities and a Mexican newspaper said on Thursday. Gunmen shot Norberto Miranda, 44, several times in the rural town of Nuevo Casas Grandes in Chihuahua state near the U.S. border on Wednesday night. "His body was found full of bullets in the radio's offices," said a spokesman for the Chihuahua attorney general's office. The newspaper El Diario said Miranda, who was well-known locally, had recently reported on growing drug violence in the remote...

Can a vein save a convicted killer? It the case of Romell Broom—it might. Broom was sentenced to death for raping and murdering 14-year-old Tryna Middleton on Sept. 21, 1984. Broom isn't supposed to be alive to witness the 25th anniversary of Middleton's death—but he is. Last Tuesday, the execution team at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility spent several hours trying unsuccessfully to find a viable vein for a lethal injection. Now, Ohio is faced with the difficult task of determining whether it can try to execute Broom a second time, after it botched the first attempt.

It must have been a grim scene on Tuesday night inside of Ohio’s state prison at Lucasville. Romell Broom lay strapped to a gurney with a team of medical technicians and correction officials hovering about him. But rather than receiving emergency medical treatment, Romell was waiting to die. Back in 1984, Broom had been convicted of abducting a fourteen-year-old child as she walked home from a football game in Cleveland, raping her and killing her. No credible opposition to the evidence presented against him was forthcoming, and the court determined that Romell should no longer be sharing above ground real...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A Virginia circuit court judge has set a Nov. 10 execution date for John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., area.

LUCASVILLE, Ohio — Gov. Ted Strickland ordered a weeklong reprieve for a condemned inmate on Tuesday after the Ohio execution team had problems finding usable veins for the lethal injection process. Executioners were unable for more than two hours to find veins that would accept fluid from an IV without collapsing for 53-year-old Romell Broom, who was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Tryna Middleton in 1984.

Seven lawyers in Tabriz and Mashhad who had been representing young Iranians detained in post-presidential election protests have been killed by the Iranian authorities in recent days, according to sources in Iran. Their deaths have deterred other lawyers from taking detainees' cases, they added. The sources spoke to The Jerusalem Post by telephone, and requested that their identities remain undisclosed for their own security. In Tabriz, Iran's fourth-largest city, the bodies of five lawyers were returned to their families earlier this week, the sources said. The five had been representing some of the hundreds of Iranians detained in the northwestern...

TEHRAN — Iran hanged 24 convicted drug traffickers in a prison last week in one of the country's biggest mass executions, the Etemad newspaper reported on Wednesday. "On Thursday, 24 international drug traffickers were hanged in a prison in Karaj," deputy Tehran prosecutor Mahmoud Salarkia was quoted as saying. "Their execution was approved by the supreme court." The report did not identify any of those sent to the gallows in Karaj, a town west of Tehran. The latest hangings bring to at least 219 the number of people executed in the Islamic republic so far this year, according to an...

A Christian woman accused of distributing the Bible, a book banned in communist North Korea, was publicly executed last month for the crime, South Korean activists said today. The 33-year-old mother of three, Ri Hyon Ok, also was accused of spying for South Korea and the United States, and of organizing dissidents, a rights group said in Seoul, citing documents obtained from the North. The Investigative Commission on Crime Against Humanity report included a copy of Ri's government-issued photo ID and said her husband, children and parents were sent to a political prison the day after her June 16 execution....

Later Christmas Eve, Keene and accomplice DeMarcus Smith approached 18-year-old Danita Gullette at a pay phone, took her jacket and shoes and fatally shot the woman, prosecutors said. Gullette was the mother of a 2-year-old girl.

In a shocking and unprecedented interview, directly exposing the inhumanity of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's religious regime in Iran, a serving member of the paramilitary Basiji militia has told this reporter of his role in suppressing opposition street protests in recent weeks. He has also detailed aspects of his earlier service in the force, including his enforced participation in the rape of young Iranian girls prior to their execution. The interview took place by telephone, and on condition of anonymity. It was arranged by a reliable source whose identity can also not be revealed. Founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in...

NEW DELHI (AP) — India's top court has refused to replace hanging with lethal injection as the country's sole method of execution, saying there is no evidence it is less painful than other ways. Monday's ruling rejected a petition by rights activist Ashok Kumar Walia, who said hanging was a "cruel and painful" method of execution and should be replaced by lethal injection, which is used in more than 30 U.S. states as a primary method of execution. "How do you know that hanging causes pain? And how do you know that injecting the condemned prisoner with a lethal drug...

A best-selling author and critic of Islam says he can't understand why U.S. President Barack Obama and the United Nations are not expressing more outrage over the execution-style murder of three Christian missionaries in Yemen, apparently by al Qaeda. According to a spokesman from the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, nine foreign nationals -- four German adults, three small German children, a British man, and a South Korean woman -- were abducted on June 12 after they ventured outside the city of Saada without their required police escorts. Days later the bodies of German nurses Rita Stumpp and Anita Gruenwald, and...

A man who fatally stabbed a convenience store clerk during a robbery 23 years ago apologized repeatedly to her relatives and to his mother before he was executed Tuesday. "I know I hurt you very bad," Michael Lynn Riley said to his victim's relatives, including her two daughters and husband. "I want you to know I'm sorry." Brandy Oaks said she accepted Riley's apology and was pleased to hear it. She was 4 when her mother, Wynona Harris, was killed. "This is a difficult day and there are no winners on either side," Oaks said. "Her spirit will live on...

McALESTER — Proclaiming his innocence and saying he would see his victim in heaven, a man convicted of battering his girlfriend's 8-year-old son and stuffing the dead body in an abandoned freezer was executed Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.--snip--Gilson became the second person to be executed this year in Oklahoma. Gilson was convicted of first-degree murder in 1998. The boy's remains were found in an abandoned freezer outside a mobile home in rural Cleveland County. An autopsy showed two fractures to the boy's skull, a tooth missing from his right jaw and fractures to his collarbone, shoulder blades, ribs,...

Thirty years ago this week, philanthropist Habib Elghanian became the first Jew executed by Iran’s radical Islamic regime after he was falsely charged and convicted of spying for Israel. His death by firing squad on May 9, 1979, sent shockwaves through Iran’s tight-knit Jewish community, which once lived in relative peace under the Shah. It prompted scores of Iran’s nearly 80,000 Jews to immediately sell off or abandon their assets and flee the country. At least 13 Jews have been executed in Iran since Elghanian. This week, as local Iranian Jews commemorate Elghanian’s death, The Journal spoke with family members,...

COLUMBIA, S.C. — An Alabama man convicted of killing a police officer has been executed in South Carolina, after cutting himself with a razor Friday. Thomas Treshawn Ivey was put to death by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. Friday in the state's death chamber in Columbia. The 34-year-old made no final statement. Prison officials said Ivey removed a blade from a disposable razor earlier and suffered non-life-threatening wounds when he cut himself on the neck. They strapped him to a chair, until he was strapped down for the lethal injection.

(05-08) 15:31 PDT Columbia, S.C. (AP) -- An Alabama man convicted of killing a police officer has been executed in South Carolina.Thomas Treshawn Ivey was put to death by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. Friday in the state's death chamber in Columbia. The 34-year-old made no final statement. Ivey had been awaiting execution since 1995, when he was convicted of killing Tommy Harrison. Prosecutors said Ivey shot the 38-year-old Orangeburg police sergeant in 1993 after trying to pass a bad check.

NINE people, including a 30-year-old woman, have been hanged in Iran, state media reported yesterday. The state-run daily newspaper Iran said four of the nine including the woman were convicted of murder in separate cases and were hanged on Wednesday. The woman was found guilty of killing her husband with a hammer, it said.

Iran has hanged a young woman who was convicted of murder when she was a minor, her lawyer said Saturday, drawing condemnation from international human rights groups who have sought to end capital punishment for juvenile offenders. Authorities executed the 23-year-old woman Friday in northern Iran without informing her lawyer or allowing the family to be present, said the lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei. She was 17 at the time the crime was committed, in 2003.

JACKSON, Ga. (AP) - A Georgia man convicted of murdering 1 of the followers of his white supremacist group insisted that he was not to blame for the killing shortly before he was put to death Wednesday evening.

...Really, what do you do with a captured pirate? Make him walk the plank? Is that even legal? Traditionally, English Admiralty law allowed for the summary execution of a captured pirate. Indeed, in medieval times, he could be hanged, drawn and quartered...Since last year, however, the Foreign Office has advised the Royal Navy not to detain pirates of some nationalities because, facing the death penalty at home, they could then claim asylum in Britain. The resurgence of piracy is hardly surprising when you consider the disparity between the average income of a Somali with a boat, and the vast amounts...

WALLA WALLA, Wash. (AP) -- Four people designated to administer lethal injections to death-row inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary have resigned, apparently worried that their identities could become public in court. The Seattle Times reported Thursday that the four resigned Tuesday for fear that their names would become known as a result of litigation on whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment..... Full article: HERE