Free Republic

Lonnie David Franklin Jr., who killed at least 10 people between 1985 and 2007 -- mainly in the South Los Angeles area -- has died at the age of 67, officials at San Quentin State Prison said Sunday. Franklin, who was sentenced to death in Los Angeles in 2016, was found unresponsive in his cell at about 7:20 p.m. Saturday. “Medical assistance was rendered and an ambulance was summoned. Franklin was pronounced deceased at 7:43 p.m. His cause of death is pending the results of an autopsy; however, there were no signs of trauma,” prison officials said. Local Local news...

<p>White supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof staged a hunger strike this month while on federal death row, alleging in letters to The Associated Press that he’s been “targeted by staff,” “verbally harassed and abused without cause” and “treated disproportionately harsh.”</p>

He killed his grandmother. And he did so brutally, dumping her in the water before she was even dead, if the coroner is correct that her cause of death was drowning. He killed two others -- all evil acts. And then once in prison, he managed to kill a fellow inmate. So, I get why the governor of Tennessee refused to grant Nick Sutton clemency when the time came for his execution and final appeals. But no one was asking for the man to be released. Instead, people -- including prison staff and the sister of the inmate he killed...

A Texas man who murdered five family members, including his 7-year-old and 9-month-old daughters, apologized to his in-laws and thanked his father and Jesus for turning around his life before he was executed Thursday evening. Abel Revill Ochoa, 47, was denied his last appeal an hour before his execution by lethal injection 18 years after he shot his wife, Cecilia, two daughters, Crystal and Anahi, his father-in-law, Bartolo, and his sisters-in-law Alma and Jackie with a handgun. Alma was the only one who survived. He shot his eldest daughter, Crystal, four times, the Houston Chronicle reported “ I would like to thank God, my dad,...

We often hear about inmates on death row who are exonerated after years behind bars, usually because the prosecution made procedural errors, or there wasn’t any DNA evidence to convincingly prove the person committed the crime. But what if it was made clear at the trial that someone else committed the murder, not the guy sentenced to death row? Patrick Bearup has been sitting behind bars for almost 17 years, sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit. He fell in with some bad people in his 20s. They told him to accompany them to the house of...

A mass murderer known as the “I-95 killer,” who spent the majority of 1994 targeting gay men -- including a Navy World War II veteran -- ate three burgers, fries and bacon before he was executed late Thursday in Florida. Gary Ray Bowles, 57, was pronounced dead at 10:58 p.m. Thursday evening after receiving a lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke, the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said. Bowles had already eaten his last meal by 3 p.m. that afternoon, prison officials told WJXT. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal filed by Bowles’ attorneys...

A little after 6 p.m., the state of Texas will execute Larry Swearingen for a crime experts believe he was unable to commit. Journalist Andrew Purcell detailed the events leading to Swearingen's impending death in a thorough investigation. A 19-year-old college student named Melissa Trotter disappeared from her Montgomery College campus, north of Houston, in December 1998. Police set their sights on Swearingen, an electrician who was witnessed having a conversation with Trotter in the college library. Montgomery County law enforcement also found a scrap of paper with the name "Larry" and his phone number in one of Trotter's books....

No one on federal death row has been executed since 2003, but on Thursday, William P. Barr, the attorney general, announced that the government was resuming executions, starting with five men convicted of killing children. The men, whose ages range from 37 to 67, have each been convicted of heinous crimes, and together have been involved in the slayings of 13 victims. The cases fell under federal jurisdiction because of how or where they were carried out. All five are being held at a high-security federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., where their executions are set for December and January....

In 2018 25 persons were put to death by the United States. They ranged from 31 years old to 83 and all were convicted by courts, and those convictions affirmed by further courts, that found them guilty of heinous, horrid, disgusting crimes against their fellow man. Despite that, I believe that their deaths were wrong. The death penalty in the United States is seldom used. 25 states have either abolished it entirely or declared a moratorium on its use. Almost a dozen other states have not executed a person in years. Yet it still remains on the books and is more than...

President Trump on Wednesday blasted California Gov. Gavin Newsom for halting executions for the state’s 737 death row inmates. “Defying voters, the Governor of California will halt all death penalty executions of 737 stone cold killers. Friends and families of the always forgotten VICTIMS are not thrilled, and neither am I!” Trump tweeted early Wednesday. The tweet comes hours before Newsom, a Democrat, is expected to sign an executive order that would halt all executions at San Quentin State Prison, closing a new execution chamber. The order would also withdraw lethal injection regulations. The order, though, would leave all convictions...

Gov. Gavin Newsom is putting a moratorium on the death penalty in California, sparing the lives of more than 700 death-row inmates. Newsom plans to sign an executive order Wednesday morning granting reprieves to all 737 Californians awaiting executions – a quarter of the country’s death row inmates. His action comes three years after California voters rejected an initiative to end the death penalty, instead passing a measure to speed up executions. Newsom says the death penalty system has discriminated against mentally ill defendants and people of color. It has not made the state safer and has wasted billions of...

<p>San Quentin prison officials called an emergency meeting Wednesday to discuss a possible connection between contraband lethal drugs and the unexplained deaths of two Death Row inmates on Monday and Tuesday, according to an internal prison document obtained by The Chronicle.</p>

A California man arrested after several police officers were injured in an explosion at a July march reportedly told authorities he gave the incendiary device to a teen and told him to throw it. Giovanni Gaines, 23, was arrested last week for his alleged involvement in the blast, which injured 10 Oakland police officers during a July 23 march honoring Nia Wilson, Lt. James Beere said Thursday, according to the SF Gate. Wilson had been fatally stabbed at a BART station a day earlier in what initially appeared to be a racially motivated attack, though, it later emerged the suspect had...

Attorneys for a Tennessee death row prisoner were trying to spare him from lethal injection and they succeeded — but not the way they hoped. Instead of getting the needle, Edmund Zagorski is scheduled to die in the electric chair on Nov. 1. If the execution goes forward, he will be only the second person to be executed that way in Tennessee since 1960. His case illustrates how hard it is for states to find ways to execute prisoners that courts will deem humane; the challenge attorneys face trying to save their clients from execution; and the frustration of some...

I was just on a blog post today about the death of John McCain and there was a discussion about his integrity compared to his opponents. And one of the people he was compared to was his Republican primary opponent of 2000 George Bush. This comment caught my eye; "In 2000 George Bush and John McCain were competing in the South Carolina Republican primary. Bush chose to spread rumours that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock, and McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter was used as the proof. Bush won the closely contested primary. Bush was never a decent...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Some say inhaling nitrogen gas would be like dying on a plane that depressurizes in flight, swiftly killing all aboard. Now more than a quarter of Alabama’s death row inmates have signed statements saying they would prefer that gas over lethal injection or the electric chair when facing execution. No inmate in the U.S. has been put to death with nitrogen gas before, and critics suspect at least some inmates are simply hoping to delay a date with the death chamber through the inevitable legal challenges ahead. State corrections officials say 51 of Alabama’s 180 inmates have...

Are Louisiana lawmakers ready to bring back the gas chamber, hanging, firing squad or electrocution as options for carrying out the state's death penalty? Attorney General Jeff Landry says he will push for those changes if Louisiana can't figure out how to get its lethal injection protocols back on track. Executions in the state are on hold and will be for at least another year as part of a legal battle and efforts to find a drug manufacturer or pharmacy that will sell them the products needed to carry out executions. Louisiana hasn't put a prisoner to death since 2010...

After two recent botched U.S. executions of inmates with compromised veins, a convicted murderer and rapist is arguing he is too ill to be put to death by lethal injection in Texas later this month. Lawyers for Danny Bible, a 66-year-old inmate set to be executed on June 27, said in a federal court filing in June that his health and vein access were worse than inmates in Alabama and Ohio whose executions were called off after IV placements failed. The cases have capital punishment critics questioning whether justice is served by executing a person convicted of horrific crimes but...

A Pennsylvania cop killer on death row wants the state Supreme Court to toss out his 2017 conviction. Attorneys for 35-year-old Eric Frein will argue Thursday investigators in Pike County violated his right to remain silent the night he was captured for murdering one state officer, Cpl. Bryon Dickson, and seriously wounding another, Trooper Alex Douglass, nearly four years ago. Frein led state and federal law enforcement on a 48-day manhunt through the Pocono Mountains after gunning down Dickson and Douglass during a shift change at the Blooming Grove barracks on Sept. 12, 2014. He was identified as a...

A former Harris County prosecutor withheld a key email that helped establish a clear alibi for Alfred Dewayne Brown in the high-profile murder case that eventually sent him to death row, District Attorney Kim Ogg said late Friday.