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A botched execution in Oklahoma has become the latest in a string of incidents raising questions about the drugs being used and the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

An Oklahoma inmate whose execution was halted Tuesday because the delivery of a new drug combination was botched died of a heart attack, the head of the state Department of Corrections said. Director Robert Patton said inmate Clayton Lockett died Tuesday after all three drugs were administered. Patton halted Lockett's execution about 20 minutes after the first drug was administered. He said there had been vein failure. The execution began at 6:23 p.m. when officials began administering the first drug, and a doctor declared Lockett to be unconscious at 6:33 p.m. About three minutes later, though, Lockett began breathing heavily,...

Oklahoma is preparing to use a new lethal injection formula on two death row inmates who are scheduled to die in the state's first double execution since 1937. Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner both are scheduled to be executed Tuesday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Oklahoma plans to hold its first double execution in nearly 80 years, Gov. Mary Fallin said Thursday. The move comes a day after the state Supreme Court removed one of the final obstacles, ruling late Wednesday that Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner are not entitled to know the source of the drugs that will be used to kill them. The inmates had sought that information through a civil lawsuit. "The defendants had their day in court. The court has made a decision," Gov. Mary Fallin said in a statement. "Two men that do not contest their guilt in heinous murders...

An Official Declaration Concerning the Criminal Jesus of NazarethJesus of Nazareth was executed on the orders of the Roman State. Method of execution: Crucifixion. The charge under Roman law was treason, and under Herodian law blasphemy against the Temple.The evidence against this anarchist was so strong that authorities of both the Roman State and the Kingdom of Herod concurred with the arrest and execution, and Jesus was subjected to trial by both governments. And in a rare uprising of spontaneous collective justice, the mass of people who were gathered for Passover called for his execution as well. The mob affirmed...

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.