Free Republic

Brewer pushes for death date By JACQUELINE LANEThe Enterprise 04/15/2004 Lawrence Russell Brewer is one of three men convicted of killing James Byrd Jr. Brewer has been on death row since 1999. One of the men convicted in the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. wants his execution date set. Lawrence Russell Brewer has written to District 1-A Judge Monte D. Lawlis, making the request. Lawlis was the trial judge in Brewer's case, which was heard in Bryan. Brewer and John William King have been on death row since 1999 for the June 7, 1998, murder. A third man,...

HAVANA - One year after a firing squad executed her son and two other ferryboat hijackers, Ramona Copello says there is nothing left for her in Cuba. Her 31-year-old son, Lorenzo Enrique Copello, was among a group of armed men who seized a ferry full of passengers on April 2, 2003, and tried to force it to sail to the United States. "I keep asking myself why they executed him," Copello told The Associated Press Thursday night. "I want to leave this country." But she wants to exit legally, as a political refugee to the United States. Her paperwork was...

"Witnesses said they saw militiamen capture a Salvadoran soldier and execute him by forcing a live grenade into his mouth. " http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50348-2004Apr4_2.html These f**ers must be stopped!!!

One Jolt Instead of Four: Nebraska Changes Electrocution Procedure to Ward off Challenge Apr 1, 2004 By Kevin O'hanlon Associated Press Writer LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - Nebraska has changed the way it uses the electric chair to head off legal challenges asserting that the procedure is cruel and unusual. Instead of using four jolts of electricity, prison officials will now administer a single dose 15 seconds long, Department of Corrections spokesman Steve King said Thursday. The change was implemented March 15 in anticipation of court arguments later this month involving three men convicted in the slayings of five people inside...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (Reuters) - The World Court on Wednesday ordered the United States to review the cases of 51 Mexicans on death row because it had failed to inform them of their right to talk to consular officials shortly after their arrests. The Mexicans, on death row in more than half a dozen states including California, Texas and Oklahoma, should have their convictions and sentences reviewed by U.S. courts because their rights had been breached, the U.N.'s top court ruled. Mexico brought a case at the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, last year in...

HAMBURG, Germany, March 29 (UPI) -- China has introduced execution chambers on wheels, according to the Hamburg weekly, Die Zeit. Prisoners are put to death by lethal injection in 19 blue-colored Toyota buses specially outfitted for the purpose. China executes more people than any other nation. Based on estimates by Chen Zhonglin, director of the law institute of Chongqing, Amnesty International puts the number of executions per year at 10,000 -- five times as many as in the rest of the world put together. Traditionally, the condemned are killed in public with shots in the back of the neck. The...

This harsh punishment is for a number of reasons: 1 – This punishment is a deterrent to anyone who wants to enter Islam just to follow the crowd or for hypocritical purposes. This will motivate him to examine the matter thoroughly and not to proceed unless he understands the consequences of that in this world and in the Hereafter. The one who announces his Islam has agreed to adhere to all the rulings of Islam of his own free will and consent, one of which rulings is that he is to be executed if he apostatizes from the faith. 2...

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) - A man who confessed to killing a fellow Vietnamese refugee in front of the man's wife was executed Tuesday. Hung Thanh Le, 37, died by an injection of drugs for the 1992 stabbing death of an Oklahoma City beauty salon owner. Le said Hai Nguyen owed him money that he needed to support his family. In a final statement, Le apologized for killing Nguyen with a meat cleaver and kitchen knife. "I can't take back what happened," he said. "I hope my death will replace the hatred ... with love for each other." Le also apologized...

Final appeals to high courts failBy Zane WilsonThe Sun News COLUMBIA - David Clayton Hill neither apologized nor confessed before he was put to death at 6:17 p.m. Friday for the 1994 murder of Georgetown police Maj. Spencer Guerry.Hill, 39, glanced briefly at the witnesses, including Sally Guerry, Spencer Guerry's widow, and smiled. "He just smiled; I don't know who he was smiling at," Sally Guerry said.Last-ditch appeals to the state Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Mark Sanford on grounds that the state's lethal injection methods could be cruel and unusual punishment all failed Friday, and the execution...

(Columbia S.C.-AP) March 19, 2004 -The United States Supreme Court on Friday voted 5-4 to let South Carolina execute a man convicted of killing a Georgetown police officer ten years ago. The ruling erases a reprieve the man received two weeks ago. The announcement came in time for officials in Columbia to move ahead with plans for the 6:00pm execution of 39-year-old David Clayton Hill at the Broad River Correctional Facility. Hill's only hope for staying alive is if the governor steps in to grant clemency. Governor Sanford's press secretary says no repreive has been issued. A federal judge had...

Execution By CAROLYN SUMA (CHINCOTEAQUE, VA -- WMDT) 3/18/2004 Photographer: Michelle Bambary On January 27th 1994, Brian Cherrix lured Tessa Van Hart to deliver a pizza in a remote location on Chincoteague Island. It was there he raped and shot the young mother of 2 in the head- leaving her to die in her car. "And then when they found her, you heart just sank and I couldn't believe it. Disbelief was really big and tension throughout the air and you just wouldn't believe someone in the community could have something like that," says Chincoteague Resident Kelly Fox. Cherrix...

JARRATT, Va. (Reuters) - A man who confessed to luring a pizza delivery woman to an empty house on a vacation island, sexually assaulted her and then shot her dead was executed in the U.S. state of Virginia on Thursday. Brian Lee Cherrix, 30, was executed by injection and pronounced dead at 9:10 p.m. in the death house of the Greensville Correctional Center, said Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Authorities said Cherrix lured Tessa Van Hart, 23, the mother of a young son and daughter, to her death in an empty house on Virginia's Chincoteague Island...

As Expected, Utah Governor Signs Measure Banning Firing Squads Mar 16, 2004 By Paul Foy/ Associated Press Writer SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Gov. Olene Walker has done away with firing squads in Utah, leaving injection as the only method for executing condemned killers. The Utah Legislature passed the measure late last month, and Walker had said she intended to sign it. She did so Monday without comment. Lawmakers have said the elimination of firing squads will deny killers the chance to go out in a blaze of glory. Despite the measure's passage, the state will make allowance for four...

Africa coup 'plotters' could face execution By Tim Butcher in Johannesburg (Filed: 11/03/2004) Zimbabwe yesterday accused Britain, the United States and Spain of plotting a coup in the oil-rich African nation of Equatorial Guinea and threatened 67 alleged mercenaries arrested at Harare airport with the death penalty. President Thabo Mbeki and Robert Mugabe Kembo Mohadi, Zimbabwe's home affairs minister, claimed that Simon Mann, the British leader of the group and a former member of the SAS, confessed under police questioning to a plan to oust President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea. The leader of the small west African state...

HUNTSVILLE - After trying to console his mother, convicted killer Marcus Cotton was executed Wednesday evening for the fatal shooting of a Houston-area assistant district attorney during a robbery attempt 7 1/2 years ago. "Well, Mom, sometimes it works out like this," Cotton said from the death chamber gurney as his mother, who was among the witnesses, watched through a window. "When you are dealing with reality, real is not always what you want it to be." Cotton, 29, a native of the Houston suburb of Missouri City, told his relatives to take care of themselves and that he loved...

Condemned Dallas carjacker set to die Thursday07:10 AM CST on Thursday, March 4, 2004Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Frank Meziere had watched a Dallas Mavericks basketball game at a restaurant with a friend and before heading home stopped at a self-service car wash to clean his black Mustang convertible. The 23-year-old Plano stockbroker, a 1996 Texas A&M University graduate, never made it home. His body was found the next day, March 26, 1998, along the side of a road in an industrial area of Oak Cliff, an area of south Dallas. He had been shot in the head 10 times....

Jordanian woman hanged twiceFrom correspondents in Amman March 2, 2004A JORDANIAN woman convicted of murdering two children was hanged twice today after the rope broke the first time because of her weight, police officials said. I'tisam Hussein, 21, fell to the ground when the rope broke but did not fracture any bones, said one of the officials who attended the execution. She was frightened and in pain, but was not given any sedatives, he said, on condition of anonymity. The rope was changed and she was hanged within the hour, after a delay as prison wardens tried to calm her...

Thousands watch as gang rapists are hanged September 29 2002 at 11:06AM By Stefan Smith Tehran - Residents of the Iranian capital were given a public display of revolutionary justice Sunday, with five convicted gang rapists executed by hanging at dawn. The gang, dubbed the "black vultures" by police who tracked their spate of brutal rapes, were strung up from cranes before thousands of people, including the mother of at least one of them, at two different sites in Tehran. With authorities keen to make an example of the gang, the local and foreign press were given full access to...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One in five Americans would likely pay to watch a televised execution of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) if he were found guilty and sentenced to death but more than a third said executions should not be televised, a poll says.   A national telephone poll of more than 1,000 people aged 18 or older, done for TRIO cable network by Harris Interactive, asked respondents who they would most likely pay to watch executed if executions were shown on pay-per-view television. Bin Laden, accused of masterminding the September 11, 2001, attacks...

<p>SALT LAKE CITY - The Utah Senate approved a bill Thursday that would eliminate firing squad executions - used most recently here in 1996 - unless lethal injection executions are found unconstitutional.</p> <p>The bill passed 16-9 and now returns to the House for approval of some minor Senate amendments.</p>