Free Republic

FULL TITLE: l them I finished strong': Last words of Texas woman, 38, executed for starving girlfriend's 9-year-old son to death A Texas woman was executed this evening, after spending the last eight years on death row for the murder of her girlfriend's son a decade ago. Lisa Ann Coleman, 38, of Arlington, Texas, was found guilty of capital murder in the death of 9-year-old Davontae Williams, who had been beaten and bound, and whose body bore more than 250 scars when officials discovered him on July 26, 2004. 'What she’s really guilty of is being a black lesbian,' Stickels...

The families of two journalists beheaded by Islamic State jihadists were both warned by US government officials they could face prosecution if they raised a ransom for their release. The recent executions of James Foley and Steven Sotloff by Islamic State (IS) extremists triggered worldwide revulsion and Washington has since declared it is at war with the radicals. The United States has a policy of never paying ransoms, contending that doing so would endanger Americans all over the world. Late Friday, a spokesman for Sotloff's family said the murdered journalist's parents were told by a White House counterterrorism official last...

GAZA CITY, Gaza—More than a month after The Daily Beast reported evidence suggesting Israeli soldiers carried out the summary execution of six men amid fierce combat in late July, there are no signs that the Israeli government is investigating the matter. It has declined to respond to repeated inquiries. The independent organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which the Israeli authorities have barred from Gaza, are unable to follow up in detail. And a United Nations investigation of abuses on both sides is barely under way.The Daily Beast has continued its own investigation, however. And the picture that’s emerging...

Gangster, arson-murderer hanged Crime Aug. 29, 2014 - 03:00PM JST ( 16 ) AFP TOKYO — Japan executed a mobster and a killer arsonist on Friday, bringing to 11 the total number of death sentences carried out since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took power in 2012. The executions came days before Abe is expected to reshuffle his cabinet amid speculation that he will appoint a new justice minister, whose approval is needed for any sentence to be carried out. “I ordered the executions after careful consideration,” Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki told reporters

A Missouri inmate was put to death Wednesday for raping and killing a college student in 1995, making him the first U.S. prisoner put to death since an Arizona lethal injection went awry last month. When the drugs began flowing, his head lowered back to the pillow and he appeared to breathe heavily for about 15 seconds before closing his eyes. Some of his witnesses began crying after he fell unconscious.Texas and Missouri instead administer a single large dose of pentobarbital — often used to treat convulsions and seizures and to euthanize animals. Missouri changed to pentobarbital late last year...

A federal appeals judge issued a blistering dissent in a death-row case on Monday, declaring that an execution system that relies on drugs is doomed and the guillotine would be better. "Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful — like something any one of us might experience in our final moments," Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote. "But executions are, in fact, nothing like that. They are brutal, savage events, and nothing...

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer ordered a review of the state's execution process after a convicted double murderer gasped and snorted for more than an hour and a half before his death Wednesday. Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne's office said Joseph Rudolph Wood was pronounced dead at 3:49 p.m. local time, one hour and 57 minutes after the execution started. Wood's lawyers had filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court while the execution was underway, demanding that it be stopped. The appeal said Wood was "gasping and snorting for more than an hour." In ordering the review, Brewer said...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Marine who was declared a deserter nearly 10 years ago after disappearing in Iraq and then returning to the U.S. claiming he had been kidnapped, only to disappear again, is back in U.S. custody, officials said Sunday. Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, 34, turned himself in and was being flown Sunday from an undisclosed location in the Middle East to Norfolk, Va. He is to be moved Monday to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, according to a spokesman, Capt. Eric Flanagan. Maj. Gen. Raymond Fox, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Lejeune, will determine whether...

Florida on Wednesday executed a Tampa-area man who murdered his estranged wife and her young son in 1985, two years after he had been paroled for killing his previous spouse. It was the third U.S. execution in less than 24 hours since a botched April lethal injection in Oklahoma. John Ruthell Henry, 63, was pronounced dead at 7:43 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection for the stabbing death of Suzanne Henry. He also was convicted of stabbing her 5-year-old son, Eugene Christian, hours after the woman's murder.

John Ruthell Henry is scheduled to die Wednesday for 1985 murders.A man who killed his estranged wife and her son two years after he had been paroled for murdering his previous spouse is scheduled to be executed this week, more than two decades after he was sentenced to death. John Ruthell Henry, 63, is scheduled to die Wednesday for the 1985 stabbing death of his wife, Suzanne Henry, in Pasco County. Gov. Rick Scott signed Henry's death warrant for that murder. He also was convicted in Hillsborough County of stabbing Suzanne Henry's 5-year-old son, Eugene Christian, near Plant City, hours...

The botched execution of a brutal murderer in Oklahoma has done nothing to change American minds about the death penalty, but does have them looking to the past for better solutions. A new NBC poll shows the death penalty enjoying a significant level of public support — more than many other government policies — if still down from its peak twenty years ago: A badly botched lethal injection in Oklahoma has not chipped away at the American public’s support of the death penalty, although two-thirds of voters would back alternatives to the needle, an exclusive NBC News poll shows....

As described in last week's column, The New York Times and other sanctimonious news outlets censored details about the crime that put Clayton Lockett on death row, the better to generate revulsion at his deserved execution. You might say they buried the facts alive. For example, the Times neglected to mention anything about the raping that preceded the murdering, which seems odd for a newspaper so consumed with the "War on Women." (At least Lockett never refused to pay for a woman's birth control pills!) The Times also dropped the part about Lockett's dangerous behavior while incarcerated, such as ordering...

A federal appeals court has stayed the Texas execution of a convicted rapist and murderer, saying that his defense team should have more time to make their case that Campbell is intellectually disabled. Robert James Campbell's execution had been scheduled for Tuesday. It would have been the first execution in the United States since a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma left an inmate writhing in pain before death. His defense team now will have more time to appeal his death sentence. "It is regrettable that we are now reviewing evidence of intellectual disability at the eleventh hour before Campbell's scheduled...

In the wake of an execution that left a prisoner dying of a painful heart attack, Oklahoma is delaying lethal injection for another man so that the matter can be fully investigated. Oklahoma's attorney general today said that he'd put off the execution of convicted murderer and rapist Charles Warner so that the state can finish looking into what led to the botched execution of prisoner Clayton Lockett, The New York Times reports. The mix of drugs Lockett was given last week left him awake during the second and third rounds of chemicals designed to stop breathing and then the...

Last week the state of Oklahoma "botched" an execution. Botched is the accepted term in the media coverage, despite the fact Clayton Lockett was executed. He just died badly, suffering for 43 minutes until he eventually had a heart attack. Oklahoma's governor has called for an investigation. President Obama asked Attorney General Eric Holder (who is seeking the death penalty in the Boston Marathon bombing case) to review the death penalty. Obama's position was a perfectly defensible straddle: "The individual ... had committed heinous crimes, terrible crimes, and I've said in the past that there are certain circumstances where a...

Killing a human being turns out to be surpassingly hard to do. This was made gruesomely apparent in Oklahoma last week, when the state tried to execute a convicted murderer named Clayton Lockett by injecting him with a new and secret mix of deadly chemicals. "Man," Lockett moaned, sixteen minutes after the injection and long after he was supposed to be dead, and he tried to get up, and began to writhe and jerk on the gurney until prison officials closed a curtain to keep the witnesses from seeing the rest of the episode. Alarm set in. The doctor on...

Last week, Oklahoma authorities botched the execution of a murderer named Clayton Lockett. The execution by lethal injection took more than 40 minutes. According to witnesses, he twitched and gasped and said, "oh, man" after officials had thought he was unconscious. Opponents of the death penalty outdid one another in expressing their outrage. It was the left's hysteria-of-the-week. In contrast, many Oklahomans were not nearly as upset. "Who cares if he feels pain," stylist April Sewell, at Hair Naturally in Perry told Oklahoma TV station KFOR. "You know, honestly, he's getting away a lot easier than how his victim...

*** Oklahoma was using a new lethal injection drug for the first time, and the secrecy surrounding the drugs had caused a protracted argument that extended to the state’s courts and lawmakers. Branstetter had been there in January when Michael Wilson was killed with a three-drug mix that had been obtained from a compounding pharmacy. Wilson’s final words, spoken after the injections: “I feel my whole body burning.” So she wanted to go to see what was different this time. At the beginning, the only thing that was different was that the execution was late. At 6:23 p.m., 23 minutes...

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations human rights office says U.S. death row inmate Clayton Lockett's suffering during his botched Oklahoma execution this week may amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international human rights law. A spokesman for the office, Rupert Colville, says Lockett's prolonged death on Tuesday is "the second case of apparent extreme suffering caused by malfunctioning lethal injections" reported in the United States this year, after Dennis McGuire's execution in Ohio on Jan. 16 with an allegedly untested combination of drugs. Colville told reporters Friday in Geneva that "the apparent cruelty involved in these recent...

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.