Free Republic

A man convicted of killing two convenience store employees in a 1989 robbery was executed by the state of Arizona after he lost an appeal that raised questions about the drugs used in putting him to death by lethal injection. A jury convicted Eric John King in 1990 of two counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of convenience store clerk Ron Barman and the store's security guard, Richard Butts, during a robbery that netted the killer $72. King, 47, was executed at a state prison in Florence, Arizona, southeast of Phoenix, according to state Attorney General Tom Horne....

FLORENCE, Ariz. — A man convicted of killing two people in a 1989 Phoenix convenience store robbery was executed Tuesday despite last-minute arguments by his attorneys who raised questions over one of the lethal injection drugs and said they had raised "substantial doubt" about his guilt. Eric John King's death at the state prison in Florence was Arizona's first execution since October and one of the last expected to use a three-drug lethal injection method. As the death chamber's curtains opened, King smiled broadly at someone he knew and waved with a hand under a sheet that covered him to...