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• The executions of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner were put off until April 22 and April 29. The state has had difficulty finding the ingredients of the cocktail used to execute prisoners. OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma court on Tuesday rescheduled a pair of executions set for this week and next so state prison officials will have more time to find a supply of drugs for the lethal injections. The decision came in a lawsuit in which two inmates had sought more information about the drugs that would be used to execute them later this month. The inmates had...

Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of North Korea, has called for the execution of 33 people for reportedly working as accomplices to South Korean Baptist missionary Kim Jung-wook....

Iran Executes Two for ‘Perversion’ Third dealt death sentence for ‘insulting the prophet’ Iran executed two gay men on Sunday for the crime of “perversion” and has sentenced a third individual to death for “insulting the prophet,” according to human rights activists tracking the situation. The head of Iran’s judiciary department in the northern city of Rasht announced on Sunday that two homosexual men had been executed for “perversion,” which is considered a severe crime under Iran’s hardline Islamic law. The executions come less than two months after Iranian authorities publicly hanged 40 individuals in a two-week period. Iran is...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A 66-year-old inmate has died while awaiting execution at San Quentin State Prison for a 1988 murder in Sacramento County. The state corrections department said Ralph Michael Yeoman was found unresponsive in his cell early Tuesday. The cause of death is awaiting an autopsy. He was sentenced to death in 1990 for the Feb. 13, 1988, first-degree murder, kidnap and robbery of 73-year-old Doris Horrell of Citrus Heights. Her body was found in a field west of Interstate 5 near what is now Sleep Train Arena. ...

Despite growing controversy over the use of anonymous pharmacies for lethal injections, the U.S. Supreme Court has thus far declined to block any executions based on 11th-hour appeals challenging the drug connections. That includes the case of Michael Taylor, a convicted rapist and murderer who was put to death at 12:10 a.m. Wednesday in Missouri after a furious legal battle that stretched well into the night. It's worth nothing, however, that three high court justices wanted to block Taylor's execution and cited the words of an appeals judge who said so little was known about the source of the deadly...

A Missouri inmate was executed early Wednesday for abducting, raping and killing a Kansas City teenager as she waited for her school bus in 1989, marking the state's fourth lethal injection in as many months. Michael Taylor, 47, was pronounced dead at 12: 10 a.m. at the state prison in Bonne Terre. Federal courts and the governor had refused last-minute appeals from his attorneys, who argued that the execution drug purchased from a compounding pharmacy could have caused Taylor inhuman pain and suffering.

SEFFNER -- A man was executed at Florida State Prison in Starke on Wednesday night. Juan Carlos Chavez was pronounced dead at 8:17 p.m. Chavez was convicted of the 1995 abduction, rape and murder of 9-year-old Jimmy Ryce in Miami-Dade County. Ryce was abducted from his bus stop near his home. As Ryce tried escaping Chavez, investigators say Chavez shot him in the back. Ryce's body was found dismembered in three plastic flower pots, covered with concrete three months later. The execution at Starke was attended by a Bay area father that lost his 8-year-old daughter in 1998. Roy Brown...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A woman convicted of torturing and killing a mentally impaired man she lured to Texas with the promise of marriage was put to death Wednesday evening in a rare executionof a female prisoner. The lethal injection of Suzanne Basso, 59, made the New York native only the 14th woman executed in the U.S. since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume. Almost 1,400 men have been put to death during that time.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An attorney for a condemned Ohio inmate whose slow, gasping execution with a new drug combination renewed questions about the death penalty was temporarily suspended last week while officials investigated whether he had coached the condemned man to fake symptoms of suffocation. The Office of the Public Defender said Robert Lowe, one of the attorneys representing inmate Dennis McGuire, was back at work Monday after an internal review failed to substantiate the allegation. State prison records released Monday say McGuire told guards that Lowe counseled him to make a show of his death that would, perhaps,...

Family alleges Ohio execution unconstitutional January 25, 2014 AP COLUMBUS, Ohio – The prolonged execution of an Ohio inmate during which he repeatedly gasped and snorted amounted to cruel and unusual punishment which should not be allowed to happen again, the inmate's family said in a federal lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed late Friday, also alleges the drug maker that produced the medications illegally allowed them to be used for an execution and should be prohibited from making them available for capital punishment. McGuire "repeated cycles of snorting, gurgling and arching his back, appearing to writhe in pain," the lawsuit said....

Mexican who gunned down Houston cop WILL be executed tonight despite last-minute pleas from Mexico government A Mexican held on death-row in a Texan prison for murdering a policeman will be executed tonight despite last-ditch appeals from lawyers for clemency. Edgar Arias Tamayo, 46, was set for lethal injection this evening for shooting of Guy Gaddis, 24, in January 1994. The case has been a focus of protests in his home town and diplomatic pressure, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry calling for a delay to Tamayo's execution. Tamayo's lawyers had lodged an appeal arguing that he was ineligible...

The US state of Texas plans to execute a Mexican national convicted of murder, over the objections of the US and Mexican governments. Mexico says Wednesday's execution of Edgar Tamayo, 46, will violate international law. The country says he was not told of his right to seek legal assistance from the Mexican consulate when he was arrested.

HOUSTON — Secretary of State John F. Kerry and a former Texas governor are part of an international coalition trying to halt Texas' execution of a Mexican citizen this week. Edgar Tamayo Arias, 46, is to be put to death Wednesday for fatally shooting Houston Police Officer Guy Gaddis in 1994. Gaddis, 24, had been flagged down near a nightclub by a man who accused Tamayo of robbing him. The officer arrested Tamayo, handcuffed him and put him in the back seat of his patrol car. He was driving away when Tamayo drew a concealed pistol and shot Gaddis three...

**SNIP** Firing squads have all but disappeared from the U.S. While Oklahoma law provides for them if lethal injection is ever ruled unconstitutional, only Utah actually continues to use them, and then only for inmates convicted before 2004 as it seeks to phase them out. But the shortage of pentobarbitol has some lawmakers reconsidering. State Sen. Bruce Burns filed a similar bill (.pdf) Monday in Wyoming, saying the state would have to do something soon before it runs out of approved drugs for lethal injections.

A condemned man appeared to gasp several times and took an unusually long time to die - more than 20 minutes - in an execution carried out Thursday with a combination of drugs never before tried in the U.S. Dennis McGuire's attorney Allen Bohnert called the convicted killer's death "a failed, agonizing experiment" and added: "The people of the state of Ohio should be appalled at what was done here today in their names."

Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire appeared to gasp and convulse for roughly 10 minutes before he finally died Thursday during his execution by lethal injection using a new combination of drugs, reporters who witnessed it said. He was convicted in 1994 of the rape and murder of 22-year-old Joy Stewart, who was seven months pregnant. Her relatives were at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville to witness his death, according to tweets from television reporter Sheila Gray. McGuire's "children and daughter-in-law were crying and visibly upset," Gray tweeted. Killer executed in Ohio A Dayton Daily News reporter who also watched the...

Murderer first to be executed with controversial 'air hunger' drug after last meal of beef, ice cream and chicken (rest of title) 'One can scarcely conceive of a sequence of crimes more shocking to the conscience or to moral sensibilities than the senseless kidnapping and rape of a young, pregnant woman followed by her murder,

It's sweetness, light and fervent desires for peace and love all the way down. Right.According to a report from The Week First Post, Initial reports suggested Jang Song-thaek, the No.2 man in North Korea, had been shot by a firing squad after being found guilty of treason. But an account in Wen Wei Po – China's official mouthpiece – suggests the reality was even more disturbing.According to the report, Jang was stripped naked and thrown into a cage, along with his five closest aides, the Straits Times reports. They were joined by 120 hounds who had been "starved for three days", the paper...

BEIJING -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's powerful uncle was stripped naked, thrown into a cage, and eaten alive by a pack of ravenous dogs, according to a newspaper with close ties to China's ruling Communist Party. Hong Kong-based pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po reported that Jang and his five closest aides were set upon by 120 hunting hounds which had been starved for five days.

Details emerging from North Korea about Kim Jong-un's surprising public purging of his uncle from a top position indicate that it was a family affair with his aunt and brother, armed with a pistol, taking part in the arrests of ranking officials. ... "What you have to understand is that the North Korean dynasty is run by an absolute blood-based hereditary mindset," pointed out Lee Yun-keol, the president of North Korea Strategic Information Service Center. The purge drama was designed by Kim Kyong-hee, Jang's wife, and Kim Jong-un, Lee said. ... The South Korean media have also been reporting that...