Free Republic

The death penalty is like gun rights in Texas politics: Candidates don’t dare get in the way of either. But Republican Greg Abbott, the favorite to succeed Gov. Rick Perry, must soon make a decision as attorney general that could disrupt the nation’s busiest death chamber. It’s an election-year dilemma for Abbott. But in Texas, it’s one that Democratic rival Wendy Davis can’t easily exploit, illustrating the difficulty of navigating the issue in such a pro-death penalty state. Abbott must soon decide whether to stick with his earlier opinions that Texas must disclose the source of the execution drugs it...

Hundreds of people are executed every year in Iran. Balal, thanks to the actions of his victim's mother, will not be one of them. Balal was standing on a chair, blindfolded and with a noose around his neck, when the mother of the man he stabbed to death seven years ago approached him, the Guardian reports. According to some interpretations of sharia law, the victim’s family participates in the punishment by pushing the chair from under the condemned man. But this time, the mother of the victim slapped Balal across the face and then helped the victim’s father remove the...

A serial killer was put to death Thursday in Texas after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his lawyers' demand that the state release information about where it gets its lethal injection drug. Tommy Lynn Sells, 49, was the first inmate to be injected with a dose of newly replenished pentobarbital that Texas prison officials obtained to replace an expired supply of the powerful sedative. Sells declined to give a statement. As the drug began flowing into his arms inside the death chamber in Huntsville, Sells took a few breaths, his eyes closed and he began to snore. After less than...

A Mississippi woman convicted of murdering her husband was granted at least a brief reprieve on Thursday but could still become the first female prisoner executed in the state in 70 years. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood had asked the state Supreme Court to set the execution of Michelle Byrom, 57, for Thursday night for the fatal shooting of her husband, Edward Byrom Sr. in 1999. But the court denied Hood's motion to carry out the execution, giving her attorneys hope the court will take up their motion to seek permission to file additional appeals.

"Lawyers for two men on death row in Oklahoma say the state has informed them it has a new execution protocol that would allow it to choose from any of five lethal injections. The change comes days after the state revealed that it had been unable to obtain the chemicals for its existing protocol: pentobarbital and vecuronium — prompting a court to delay the executions of convicted murderers Charles Warner and Clayton Lockett for a month. In the revised protocol given to the men's defense team, prison officials outline five possible one-drug and three-drug injections it could use to kill...

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas has obtained a new batch of the drugs it uses to execute death row inmates, allowing the state to continue carrying out death sentences once its existing supply expires at the end of the month.

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas is set to execute on Wednesday an aspiring rap musician who was convicted of slitting the throat and stabbing to death a music studio owner in San Antonio so that he could rob him of equipment.

• 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...