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About three hours before convicted killer Karl Roberts was to die, a federal judge halted his execution Tuesday after the inmate sought an appeal for the first time since his conviction. Until the last-minute change of heart, Roberts had maintained that he wanted to die after he was convicted in 2000 for the kidnapping, rape and murder of his 12-year-old niece, Andi Brewer. Meanwhile, Charles Singleton, the state’s longest-serving deathrow inmate, was executed as planned Tuesday. He was pronounced dead at 8:06 p.m. Roberts, 35, signed a paper about 3:30 p.m., authorizing his attorneys to file an appeal, said Dina...

Family revisits grief, celebrates life on eve of execution HATFIELD, Ark. - It was nearly four years ago that Karl Roberts was sentenced to die for killing his own niece. The murder not only shocked the community but tore an entire family apart. Melanie Brewer was 10 years old when her sister, Andria, whom everyone called Andi, was killed. She remembers her sister was always full of joy. "Everyone would be frowning and she would walk into a room. Everyone would smile and say, 'There's Andi,'" said Melanie Brewer But the man who killed Andi was no stranger: Her...

Texas sets first execution of 2004Man was convicted of raping, killing woman in College Station 12:42 PM CST on Tuesday, January 6, 2004Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas – Brazos County District Attorney Bill Turner is surprised convicted killer Ynobe Matthews, a man he worked to send to death row, is following through on his desire to be executed voluntarily. "He took that position from the time he got the death penalty," Turner said a day before Matthews' scheduled lethal injection Tuesday night. "I believed that would be short-lived." Cut short, however, at Matthews' request, were any extensive appeals of his conviction...

<p>The voices inside Charles Singleton's head vary, in volume and number, regardless of whether he has taken medication for his schizophrenia. Inside his Arkansas cell, he says he can often hear voices that speak of killing him.</p> <p>Singleton's attorney says his 44-year-old client welcomes the scheduled Tuesday night execution he faces, because he is tired of living with mental illness.</p>

Happy New Year's Eve to all at Free Republic!!! Make your predictions for 2004. Good Luck!!!

Title: Korean War POW Facing Repatriation to North Korea by Yeo Si-dong (sdyeo@chosun.com) Related Articles - South Korean POW Home After 50 years in the North - South's Consular Demands Meeting with POW Defector BEIJING - A former South Korean Prisoner of War (P.O.W.) --from the Korean War, who tried to escape North Korea Monday with his wife by using fake passports has been arrested by the Chinese police and is being held at Tumen, a city bordering North Korea, a source from Beijing said Thursday. The South Korean Embassy immediately began behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Chinese government, and...

A Death Row prisoner has told of his "disappointment" after officials halted his execution 20 minutes before he was to be killed. Kevin Lee Zimmerman, 42, says he had finished his "last meal" when the US Supreme Court sent word that he could not be executed. The Texas execution was delayed due to a legal row over one of the drugs used to carry out the death sentence. He was to have been put to death in Huntsville, Texas, for a fatal stabbing and robbery at a motel in 1987. "I'm disappointed," Zimmerman told a Texas Department of Criminal Justice...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution Wednesday of a condemned inmate who was part of a lawsuit that challenged one of the drugs used to carry out the death sentence. Kevin Lee Zimmerman won his reprieve about 20 minutes before he could have been put to death for a fatal stabbing and robbery at a Beaumont motel in 1987. In a brief order, Justice Antonin Scalia stopped the punishment pending an additional order from him or the court. ``I'm disappointed,'' Zimmerman told a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman, Michelle Lyons. ``I was ready to...

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....