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Condemned murderer Donald Beardslee, who killed two young Peninsula women in 1981 while on parole from an earlier murder conviction, was executed by lethal injection early today at San Quentin State Prison. Beardslee spent the last hours before his execution talking with his spiritual adviser and members of his legal team. He skipped the traditional last meal and only drank grapefruit juice before his death. No members of Beardslee's family were present for the execution, and the sole person who attended on his behalf was his attorney, Jeannie Sternberg. Beardslee, of Redwood City, was convicted of the shotgun killing of...

HARTFORD, Conn. (CNS) -- As the date neared for Connecticut's first execution in nearly 45 years, the state's Catholic conference joined forces with the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty in a petition drive to end the death penalty. The petition was distributed to every parish in the Hartford Archdiocese, along with a letter from Archbishop Henry J. Mansell of Hartford reminding Catholics, "The Gospel mandates us to respect human life from conception to natural death." Michael Ross, 45, is scheduled to be executed Jan. 26. He was sentenced to death in 1987 for murdering four teenage girls in...

HUNTSVILLE -- A condemned killer was executed Tuesday night for the fatal prison beating of a convicted child molester. James Porter, who dropped his appeals and ordered nothing be done to stop the first execution of the year in the nation's most active capital punishment state, apologized to relatives of his victims and expressed love for his family. "I am sorry for the pain I have caused you," he said in a brief final statement. "I know it is a great loss and I want to apologize. I am sorry. And to my family I love you and I will...

Joanne Baribeault Welch wants to look into Michael Ross' eyes when they strap him into the death gurney. She wants to see the needle disappear into his arm. And she wants to see the life drain from his body. "It'll be good for him," says Welch, 45, whose sister Wendy Baribeault was 17 when she was raped and strangled in 1984 by Ross, an Ivy League serial killer who is waiting to die on Connecticut's gone-to-seed Death Row.

Saudi executed and crucified Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabian authorities Friday beheaded and crucified a Saudi national convicted of killing and robbing his mother. The Saudi Press Agency quoted an Interior Ministry statement that said the convict was executed and crucified in public in the southern province of Baha. Friday's beheading brought to 34 the number of people executed this year in Saudi Arabia, mostly smugglers. Earlier this month an Iraqi and three Pakistani drug smugglers were beheaded in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah. Executions of people convicted of murder, rape, armed robbery and...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabian authorities Friday beheaded and crucified a Saudi national convicted of killing and robbing his mother. The Saudi Press Agency quoted an Interior Ministry statement that said the convict was executed and crucified in public in the southern province of Baha. Friday's beheading brought to 34 the number of people executed this year in Saudi Arabia, mostly smugglers. Earlier this month an Iraqi and three Pakistani drug smugglers were beheaded in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

Brain defects caused him to follow orders, attack pair, they say: Lawyers for Donald Beardslee, scheduled to die by lethal injection Jan. 19 for the murders of two young women in San Mateo County in 1981, appealed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency Thursday, arguing that Beardslee is a mentally impaired dupe who is facing execution for crimes orchestrated by others. "The jury was unaware of the extent to which his actions and conduct were controlled by severe brain damage that impaired his functioning since birth,'' attorneys Michael Laurence and Susan Garvey said in a 48-page petition to Schwarzenegger. They...

Public defender's office still seeking to represent killer The state Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on whether a lower court erred in denying the state public defender's request to litigate on behalf of serial killer Michael Ross. The court set the hearing for Wednesday. Gerard Smyth, the state's chief public defender, said his office filed the appeal because New London Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford made a mistake when he refused to let the public defenders represent Ross as his “next friend.” “It's so important that we pursue this and make sure that, whatever the outcome, that it's...

Redwood City killer's execution date set for Jan. 19 A federal appeals court late Wednesday upheld the death sentence of Donald Beardslee for murdering two young women in San Mateo County in 1981, moving him one step closer to execution on Jan. 19. A day after hearing arguments on a last-ditch appeal by Beardslee's attorneys, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that errors in his penalty trial did not affect the jury's verdict. Beardslee can still ask the full appeals court for a rehearing and appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has previously refused...

HARTFORD, Conn. -- The Connecticut Civil Liberties Union is entering the legal fray over next month's scheduled execution of serial killer Michael Ross, challenging lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment. The CCLU lawsuit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court on behalf of Ross' father, Dan Ross, acting as "next friend" to his son. The lawsuit cites an anesthesiologist's critical report of Connecticut's death penalty procedures and his conclusions that the process could inflict severe pain and trauma on Ross. "Media witnesses or family witnesses are being misled [about the procedure ], because it looks like the person is...

Termination of bL&Z, 29Dec04 Almighty God, we approach your throne in humbleness of heart because we see these days how quickly lives can be lost in natural disaster. Our lives are brief, and we are unwise not to admit that fact. Nonetheless, our lives are assigned by Your Almighty Hand, and, therefore, they are not unjustly to be despised, debased, or destroyed by the hand of man. Your command to us is this: "Thou shalt not murder." That is why we lift our voices imploring for the soon termination of binLaden and alZarqawi. These have unjustly taken into their own...

NEW LONDON, Conn. - A judge ruled Tuesday that a confessed serial killer — set to become the first inmate executed in New England in 40 years — is mentally competent and can forgo further appeals of his death sentence. Michael Ross, 45, is scheduled to be executed Jan. 26 for killing four young women in eastern Connecticut in the 1980s. He has admitted to killing a total of eight women and raping several of them. Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford ordered Ross to testify in court and be examined by a psychiatrist to ensure he was competent to decide...

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...