Free Republic

There is a better way to handle the terrorists, labeled insurgents by the media, in Iraq. In World War II, for a couple of years, there were a group of Nazi terrorists called “werewolfs” who attacked and killed the allied forces and key civilians in former Nazi-held territory. They were as vicious and ruthless as the current terrorists in Iraq. Their favorite techniques were bombings, sniper attacks, ambushes and even poisoning of food supplies. What history does not tell us is that the allied forces had to take “justice” in their own hands when these terrorists were found and captured,...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Hippocratic Oath doctors swear to save lives, not end them. But one doctor accused of doing just that also happens to be the governor of Kentucky, and a lawmaker willing to sign execution orders on death row inmates. "There is a distinct difference between acting as a physician for a patient and acting as a governor for the people of the commonwealth of Kentucky," Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a former family physician and U.S. congressman elected to the state's highest office last year, told FOX News. Last month, Fletcher signed the death warrant for 51-year-old Thomas Clyde...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Hippocratic Oath (search) doctors swear to save lives, not end them. But one doctor accused of doing just that also happens to be the governor of Kentucky, and a lawmaker willing to sign execution orders on death row inmates. "There is a distinct difference between acting as a physician for a patient and acting as a governor for the people of the commonwealth of Kentucky," Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a former family physician and U.S. congressman elected to the state's highest office last year, told FOX News. Last month, Fletcher signed the death warrant for 51-year-old Thomas...

HARTFORD, Conn. - More than 940 people have been executed since the United States reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Not one was in New England. That is set to change Jan. 26, the date for the execution of serial killer Michael Ross. Ross, 45, admits killing eight women in Connecticut and New York in the early 1980s, and raping most of his victims. He has been in prison for 20 years - 17 on Connecticut's death row - for four of those murders and faces lethal injection. After numerous appeals, including two decided by the Connecticut Supreme Court, Ross has...

Gov.M. Jodi Rell said on Monday that she would not grant a reprieve to a serial killer who is to become the first person in the Northeast to be executed in more than 40 years. She also said she would veto any effort by the General Assembly to repeal Connecticut's death penalty law.

HARTFORD -- Gov. M. Jodi Rell said Monday she will not interfere with plans to put a serial killer to death next month in what would be the first execution in New England since 1960. "I have no sympathy for Michael Ross," the Republican governor said. Ross, 45, is on death row for killing four young women in the 1980s and has admitted killing four other women. He is set to die by lethal injection Jan. 26. The governor has no power to commute Ross' death sentence. The state constitution allows her, however, to grant a reprieve to postpone the...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

HOUSTON, Dec. 1 - Hours before she was to have been executed for the murders of her husband and children, a Texas woman was spared on Wednesday when Gov. Rick Perry granted her a 120-day reprieve to review disputed evidence that convicted her. Although Mr. Perry said that after a lengthy review of the case "I see no evidence of innocence," he accepted a recommendation made Tuesday by the Board of Pardons and Paroles to delay the execution of the woman, Frances Newton. The delay is to be used to apply "new technology" in a retesting of a gun prosecutors...

George Banks is getting a chance to live a bit longer, thanks to a court ruling Wednesday that puts his execution, originally set for tonight, on hold. A successful appeal to the state Supreme Court will send Banks' case back to Luzerne County Court for an evidentiary hearing to determine his mental capacity and competency, which his defense lawyers hope will spare him from ever being put to death. The high court ordered that the hearing be held "expeditiously." "This is exactly what we were looking for," said Banks' defense lawyer Albert J. Flora Jr. "It was obviously very close...

Some family members of violent-crime victims are jaded by California's sluggish rate of executing condemned killers. "If it went faster, the death penalty would be a deterrent," said Carole Carrington, the mother and grandmother of two Yosemite sightseers murdered by handyman Cary Stayner in 1999. Modesto's Scott Peterson, 32, faces a sentence of death or life in prison without the possibility of parole at the conclusion of a penalty phase scheduled to begin Tuesday. He was convicted Nov. 12 of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son, Conner. Stayner killed four people in all. In federal court, he...

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Marine being investigated for allegedly killing an unarmed, wounded Iraqi was acting under extreme combat stress, comrades said yesterday. It was also disclosed that the Marine had just returned to duty after being shot in the face the previous day. [snip] Marines interviewed yesterday said the shooting wasn't a scandal, but evidence of how soldiers react under extreme circumstances. "I can see why he would do it," said Lance Cpl. Christopher Hanson. "He was probably running around being shot at for days on end in Fallujah. There should be an investigation, but they should look...

he Rosenberg clan - the circle of defenders and sympathizers that has come together for half a century on behalf of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg - gathered once again yesterday, but this time the emphasis was as much on family as it was on politics. A documentary film about the case and its consequences for the Rosenberg family made by a granddaughter of the couple, Ivy Meeropol, was shown at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in Lower Manhattan. The Rosenbergs were convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and were executed in 1953.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - A man whose death sentence for impulsively killing a woman during a 1992 robbery was opposed even by some capital punishment supporters was executed by injection early Friday. Frank Chandler, 32, was put to death at Central Prison for killing 90-year-old Doris Poore, who surprised him when he broke into her house on a misguided search for drugs. He lay on a gurney, raising his head several times to look at the gathered witnesses, then reclined and closed his eyes. When the injection was administered, he gave two sharp breaths, then stopped breathing.

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. – Just the other day, Marc Klaas received a letter explaining the latest delay in executing the man responsible for his 12-year-old daughter Polly Klaas' brutal 1993 kidnap and murder, a case that shocked California. Such letters are commonplace in California. The state has condemned 629 criminals to die since the California legislature re-enacted the death penalty in 1977, but it very rarely metes out society's ultimate punishment. In fact, the state has only put 10 people to death since resuming executions in 1992. "We've passed the 11th anniversary of my daughter's murder, we have passed the...

TWENTY YEARS AGO today, San Francisco auto broker Paul Cosner disappeared. Cosner's sister Sharon Sellitto told the police her brother was missing, but they wouldn't come to his apartment. Police, however, did show up when she reported his 1980 Honda Prelude stolen. It was that car that ended one of California's most heinous killing sprees seven months later. Killers Leonard Lake and Charles Ng had been driving the car when they were caught shoplifting in South San Francisco. Ng escaped, but police nabbed Lake, who swallowed a cyanide pill and died. Police then traced the bullet-riddled car to the missing...

HUNTSVILLE -- A man convicted in a 1992 murder case in which the troubled Houston police crime lab allegedly mishandled evidence was executed Tuesday evening despite last-minute legal battles and pleas from relatives of the murder victim that his life be spared. U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas had blocked Dominique Green's execution after his attorneys argued that boxes of improperly stored and catalogued evidence, kept by the crime lad and recently discovered, could contain information relevant to the case. The state attorney general's office objected to the reprieve, which was then lifted by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals....

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Convicted killer Ricky Morrow was executed Wednesday for the slaying of a Dallas savings and loan office worker during a robbery 22 years ago. His voice choking with emotion, Morrow expressed love to family members and called them a blessing. "I am so sorry you are going through what you are now," he told three sisters who watched from a few feet away. "But we are both headed to a better place." He listed a number of people by their first names and said he loved them all. Addressing his sisters again, he said, "Thank you for...

LUCASVILLE, Ohio — A killer who partially blamed his victim for moving when ordered to hold still was executed Wednesday. At 28, Adremy Dennis was the youngest inmate executed in Ohio since 1962. He was put to death by injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. Dennis was 18 when he and an accomplice tried to rob two men outside an Akron home in 1994. One of the men gave up $15. The other, Kurt Kyle, 29, began searching his pockets, and Dennis shot him in the head with a sawed-off shotgun. Dennis told an Ohio Parole Board member he...

HUNTSVILLE - Condemned inmate Donald Aldrich was executed Tuesday for the abduction of a homosexual East Texas man who wound up victim of a gay-bashing murder. In a brief final statement, Aldrich apologized to the family of his victim although none was present. "I hope that you can forgive me," he said. "To my family and loved ones and friends, I thank all of you for your support and I'm sorry for the pain and hurt I have caused you," Aldrich said. "I love you all and will see you on the other side." Aldrich closed his eyes and gasped...

A mass grave being excavated in a north Iraqi village has yielded evidence that Iraqi forces executed women and children under Saddam Hussein. US-led investigators have located nine trenches in Hatra containing hundreds of bodies believed to be Kurds killed during the repression of the 1980s. The skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys are being unearthed, the investigators said. They are seeking evidence to try Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity. It is believed to be the first time investigators working for the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) have conducted a full scientific exhumation of a mass grave. "It...