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Two days after the shooting deaths of nine people during a Bible study at a Charleston church, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said the gunman 'absolutely' should be put to death. However, the state, though largely pro-death penalty, cannot secure one of the drugs needed for lethal injections and has not executed an inmate since 2011. Any potential execution order for Dylann Storm Roof, 21, would be years away. He is charged with nine counts of murder in Wednesday's killing spree at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. He appeared briefly before a judge on Friday and his next court appearance is...

The execution of the only woman on Georgia's death row has been postponed at the last minute for a second time in less than a week - because the drug used in the lethal injection she was scheduled to receive was 'cloudy'. Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 46, was due to be given an injection of pentobarbital at a prison in Jackson at 7pm on Monday in retribution for plotting the murder of her husband in 1997. But after officials observed the drug to be used in the execution had a 'cloudy' appearance, they postponed her death until a future, unspecified date...

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...

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...

The nation’s most active death penalty state is running out of its execution drug. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said Thursday that its remaining supply of pentobarbital expires in September and that no alternatives have been found. It wasn’t immediately clear whether two executions scheduled for next month would be delayed. The state has already executed 11 death-row inmates this year, and at least seven more have execution dates in coming months. … Texas switched to the lethal, single-dose sedative last year after one of the drugs used in its three-drug execution process became difficult to obtain and the...

Mississippi is set to execute later on Tuesday a man convicted in 1999 of slaying four people, the first inmate in the state to be put to death using a new drug as part of the lethal injection. Benny Joe Stevens is scheduled to be executed shortly after 6 p.m. local time on Tuesday, according to Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood. He will be executed using the drug pentobarbital, a sedative often used to euthanize animals, because of a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental. Several states have switched to pentobarbital because of the shortage.

South Carolina on Friday executed a man who strangled his cellmate, using a new combination of lethal injection drugs for the first time. Jeffrey Motts, 36, was declared dead at 6:17 p.m. He was given the sedative pentobarbital instead of sodium thiopental as part of the lethal three-drug combination because federal agents seized the state's supply as part of a nationwide investigation into whether prisons obtained the drugs legally from England. Motts was sentenced to death for killing his cellmate at a state prison in Greenville County in 2005. He was already serving a life sentence for killing two elderly...

(Reuters) - Texas on Tuesday carried out its first execution using a sedative often used to euthanize animals. Cary Kerr, 46, was put to death by lethal injection for the 2001 sexual assault and strangling of Pamela Horton. The new drug, pentobarbital, replaced sodium thiopental in Texas' three-drug execution protocol.

On the eve of his execution, a Texas death row is saying that he does not want to be the state’s guinea pig for the use of a new drug for lethal injection. Cleve Foster, who is accused of murdering Sudanese refugee Nyaneur Pal in 2002, is set to be executed on Tuesday, but he doesn’t want to be the first Texan to be executed with the new drug pentobarbital.

Elderly foreign tourists are tapping Mexican pet shops for a drug used by veterinarians to put cats and dogs to sleep that has become the sedative of choice for euthanasia campaigners. Tourists from as far as Australia have travelled to Mexico to buy liquid pentobarbital, which causes a painless death in humans in less than an hour, right-to-die advocates say. Clutching photos of the bottled drug to overcome a lack of Spanish, they have maps sketched by euthanasia activists to locate back-street pet shops and veterinary supply stores near the US border. There they can buy a bottle for $35...