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Scheduled execution is first of three01:29 PM CST on Tuesday, December 9, 2003Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Confronted by gunman Billy Frank Vickers and asked if he wanted to die, Arthur City grocery store owner Phillip Kinslow had his own gun in his pickup truck and was quick to respond with the same question. Then both men opened fire. Kinslow, 50, wound up with three wounds March 12, 1993. One was a fatal shot to the chest. Vickers, who never got the bag of money Kinslow had with him, also took three bullets, but survived, was arrested and condemned for...

Terrorism in Virginia. John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo, the DC sniper murderers, have been described in many ways by people who wish to de-emphasize the pair's motives. It is about time they are recognized for what they are, Islamic terrorists. Malvo's lawyers are trying to make Malvo out as a confused young kid who was led astray by an older man (who may have also been his lover), and that he was not responsible for his crimes. To convince Malvo's jury of his legal incompetence, his lawyers have entered Malvo's sketches and writings into the record. Apparently, they...

Second inmate in as many days heads to death chamber08:24 AM CST on Thursday, December 4, 2003Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Strawberry ice cream in a plastic bowl helped send accused killer Ivan Murphy to death row for the fatal beating of an 80-year-old woman he'd known since childhood. "We dusted the inside of a Cool Whip bowl and found his fingerprint," said former Grayson County District Attorney Robert Jarvis, recalling evidence in Murphy's capital murder trial. "He told officers he hadn't been there in 20 years. He was lying about that." Murphy, 38, was set for lethal injection Thursday...

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According to the Florida Department of Corrections, the average stay on their state's death row prior to execution is 11.76 years. That means that convicted murderers, many of whom have signed confessions, are usually given a decade to use the legal system to pursue the means of extending their lives. Armed with teams of lawyers and abetted by anti-death penalty advocates and judges, they do not receive their due punishment until all legal processes have been exhausted, and sometimes not even then. Terri Schiavo received her death sentence on February 11, 2000 and her time on death row may be...

An Iranian woman is about to be executed for killing a police chief who allegedly tried to rape her, Amnesty International said yesterday. Afsaneh Nouroozi, 32, was reportedly arrested six years ago after killing the head of police intelligence in Kish, southern Iran. At her trial she said that she had acted in self-defence. Her lawyer cited an article of Iran's Islamic criminal law that allows citizens to take "proportionate" action to defend "life, honour, chastity, property or freedom" when it is impractical to summon help from the authorities. Nouroozi was nevertheless sentenced to death, and the sentence is reported...

Guarded by hundreds of armed rebels deep in a malaria-infested jungle, three American captives pass the time playing with a homemade deck of cards and dreaming of their families. The threat of death always hangs nearby. The three U.S. military contractors have been cut off from the outside world since their capture by rebels seven months ago. That isolation was broken when a Colombian journalist traveled for days over rough roads and jungle rivers with a rebel escort to interview them July 25 in remote southern Colombia. "They were nervous, and there were traces of fear on their faces," freelance...

State Supreme Court vacates stay for Hunt execution Thursday, September 11, 2003 5:44PM EDT By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The state Supreme Court sided with prosecutors Thursday, allowing the execution of a man convicted of two Robeson County killings to go forward. The court vacated the stay issued Tuesday for convicted killer Henry Lee Hunt by Robeson County Superior Court Gary Locklear, who ruled that the court should have time to review whether the state should use two drugs, not the three it now uses, for lethal injections. The use of the word "only" when describing the lethal injection process "does...

A man convicted of killing his wife and a convenience store clerk in a 1999 shooting spree was executed Wednesday a punishment he had requested. A repentant Larry Allen Hayes said there was "no good answer" for the murders and repeated again that he hoped for forgiveness. "I'm genuinely sorry for what I did," he said before the lethal injection was administered. "I ask you to reach down in your heart and forgive me. There's no excuse for what I did." Hayes, 54, was the 21st inmate executed this year in Texas, which leads the nation in carrying out capital...

Some of the people arrested during antigovernment demonstrations Iran in June and July have been executed, according to reports from inside the jails of the clerical regime. Gholam-Hossein Mohammadi from Amol (northern Iran), who lived in Akbar-Abad district in the south Tehran suburb of Islamshahr, was executed together with two of his friends for participating in evening uprisings in June and July. The authorities informed their families a few days after they were hanged and warned them not to hold any mourning ceremonies. On August 23, the state-run daily Khordad reported that a man by the name of Zaman was...

<p>WASHINGTON — For convicted spy Jonathan Pollard's first public appearance in 16 years, his father chose a back row seat.</p> <p>Other supporters jammed the court's front rows, and some were turned away, as his lawyers tried Tuesday to help win Pollard an early release from his life sentence for selling military secrets to Israel.</p>

Anti-abortion extremist: 'I expect a great reward in heaven' 08:55 AM CDT on Wednesday, September 3, 2003 Associated Press STARKE, Fla. - Paul Hill, a former minister who gunned down an abortion doctor, said he feels no remorse and suggested the state will be making him a martyr when he becomes the first person executed in the United States for anti-abortion violence. Barring an unlikely last-minute stay, the 49-year-old former Presbyterian minister will be put to death by lethal injection Wednesday evening for the 1994 murders in Pensacola of Dr. John Britton and his escort, retired Air Force Lt. Col....

<p>If Paul Hill dies by lethal injection Wednesday in Florida as scheduled, many will debate what led to the first abortion violence-related execution in the United States.</p> <p>They'll take measure of Hill's passionate, intractable beliefs. His days of showing up outside abortion clinics. His appearances on national television to defend the shooting of abortion doctors as "justifiable homicide." His saying that God told him to kill a doctor outside that Pensacola abortion clinic in 1994.</p>

Barring the unlikely possibility of a stay, a Presbyterian minister who gunned down an abortion doctor will next week become the first American executed for anti-abortion violence. To a loyal core of admirers, Paul Hill is a martyr-to-be whose actions were justified by the Bible. To others, on both sides of the abortion debate, he is a zealot undeserving of respect or pity. "In a very significant way, it's a sad day," said Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "It's sad that people like Paul Hill would murder in the name of life." Hill, a 49-year-old...

Man who killed 3 wins execution stayAttorneys argued that jurors didn't weigh his troubled past10:23 AM CDT on Wednesday, August 20, 2003By TERRI LANGFORD / The Dallas Morning News A convicted killer won a stay of execution Tuesday, the day before he was to be put to death for the 1989 slaying of an elderly Dallas woman during a robbery. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted Wednesday's scheduled execution of Mark Allen Robertson after his attorneys questioned whether jurors should have considered the ninth-grade dropout's troubled childhood before sentencing him to death for the capital murder of Edna...

Convicted strangler of 3-year-old set to die08/06/2003Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas - The one certainty in a "he said, she said" case that put a Brownsville man on death row and a woman in prison for life is that a 3-year-old boy was murdered, sexually abused and strangled with the elastic from his own underwear. "Not that any murder case makes sense, but this was just totally senseless," says Luis Saenz, the former Cameron County district attorney who prosecuted Jose Alfredo Rivera, condemned for the slaying of Luis Daniel Blanco 10 years ago. "It's hard to figure out motive or...

Utah's controversial firing squad may be doomed. "Essentially, we're going to discuss the repeal of the firing squad" during a meeting today of the state Sentencing Commission, says executive director Ron Gordon. Gordon has conducted a study that examines different methods of execution and the question of who decides on which method to employ — the Legislature or the condemned person.Lt. Jeff Meyers points to restraints used on prisoners in the firing-squad chair at the Utah State Prison. A new Deseret Morning News-KSL poll found that while 45 percent of Utahns still favor the firing squad, 51 percent believe it...

Rwandan court sentences 11 to death for genocide KIGALI, Aug. 2 — A Rwandan court has sentenced to death 11 people accused of taking part in the country's 1994 genocide, after 142 suspects were accused in the biggest ever such trial. The court convicted 73 others to life imprisonment, 21 to between one and 25 years in prison and freed 37 others including a woman and a Catholic archdeacon, officials said.

<p>In an unprecedented move, Gov. Frank O'Bannon on Monday issued a 60-day stay of execution for Death Row inmate Darnell Williams to allow for DNA testing.</p> <p>Williams, 36, was scheduled to die Friday in Michigan City for the 1986 murder of a Gary couple, but his lawyer says the DNA tests could show blood on his shorts was not from the victims.</p>

Hitman set to die for plot that killed toddler and parents07/24/2003Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Convicted hitman Allen Wayne Janecka once said the way he dealt with life on death row was to take it one day at a time. More than 22 years after he arrived on death row, this could be his last day. Janecka, 53, faced lethal injection Thursday evening for fatally shooting Kevin Wanstrath, a 14-month-old Houston boy, in the child's crib more than 24 years ago in a murder-for-hire scheme that also claimed the lives of the toddler's parents and, in an earlier murder...