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HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - A man who murdered his mother and three other people in a bloody 1995 spree at a mobile home was executed. Dennis Wayne Bagwell did not acknowledge the four relatives of his victims who watched from a window Thursday, but he thanked a spiritual adviser for being there. "I love you all,'' he told the handful of people he had invited to watch him die by injection. Bagwell, 41, denied involvement in the slayings of his mother, Leona McBee, 47; her niece, Libby Best, 24; Best's daughter, Reba, 4; and Tassy Boone, 14, the granddaughter of...

Time is running out for Stanley "Tookie" Williams. The death row inmate is in the midst of a last, vigorous appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to spare his life. But he took time Monday to speak publicly -- via telephone from San Quentin State Prison -- to an audience of about 100 members of the public gathered at a small auditorium in Belmont. Williams' life accomplishments seem to touch the extremes of the good and evil that human beings can reach. On the one hand, Williams was convicted of killing four people and is responsible...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal appeals court on Wednesday said Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a founder of the notorious Crips street gang who was nominated for a Noble Peace Prize while in prison, can be executed for killing four people in 1981. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to grant Williams another hearing based on his argument that prosecutors violated his rights when they dismissed all potential black jurors from hearing the case. Agreement from a majority of the 24 active judges is required to grant a rehearing. Judge Johnnie Rawlinson was joined by eight other judges in...

By Oliver Prichard Inquirer Staff Writer On the morning of Jan. 31, 1945, in the French Alsatian village of St. Marie aux Mines, a U.S. Army private in Pennsylvania's 28th Infantry Division was marched into a snowy courtyard, strapped to a post, and shrouded with a black hood. A general recited the soldier's crimes. A priest gave last rites. A dozen men took a position 20 paces from the accused, leveled their M-1 rifles, and fired. As the volley spattered blood and flesh, the slight body convulsed, stiffened, and made a last lurch upward. Death was pronounced even as the...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) - A defense attorney for a serial killer who wants to die said Sunday that he will remain on the case, a decision that officials said keeps the inmate on track to become the first person executed in New England in 45 years. State officials said the execution of Michael Ross remained scheduled for Monday at 9 p.m. Ross had been scheduled to receive a lethal injection Saturday, but defense attorney T.R. Paulding asked for a delay so he could explore a possible conflict of interest. Paulding did not say Sunday what he had concluded, but...

SOMERS, Conn. (AP) - Serial killer Michael Ross has tried for 10 years to speed his own death. On Saturday, little more than an hour before his scheduled execution, Ross' own attorney caused another delay, saying he needed time to examine his own potential conflict of interest. Now attorney T.R. Paulding's relationship with his client - and the ethics involved in helping him die - are under close scrutiny. Ross hired Paulding last year to help him expedite his own execution, which would be the first in New England in 45 years. "It's a good example of where the adversarial...

SOMERS, Conn -- The execution of a serial killer who has become the strongest advocate for his own death was postponed at the last moment early Saturday, delaying what would be New England's first execution in 60 years. State officials delayed the lethal injection until Monday morning to address a possible conflict of interest with serial killer Michael Ross' attorney, T.R. Paulding. "The request made by Mr. Paulding today is appropriate and we have no choice but to honor it," Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano said. Ross, an Ivy League graduate who terrorized eastern Connecticut and New York in the...

The U.S. Supreme Court has vacated the stay on Michael Ross' death sentence. That means the convicted serial killer will face execution at 2:01 a.m. Saturday.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Friday lifted a restraining order that prevents Connecticut from executing serial killer Michael Ross, but said the state would still have to wait until his father goes to the Supreme Court. The ruling makes it likely that New England's first execution in 45 years, which state officials had scheduled for early Saturday, will be delayed at least a day, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said. But he hailed the court's underlying finding. "I am satisfied and pleased that the rule of the law has been upheld and that a lawful conviction and...

Tibetan lama dodges Chinese bullet By Julian Gearing A controversial Tibetan lama - to China he's a subversive and a terrorist and to many Tibetans a saint and patriot - has been spared execution, a bullet to the back of the head. A Chinese court on Wednesday commuted the death sentence of Lama Tenzin Delek to life imprisonment, according to the official Xinhua news agency. China, not wanting a martyr on its hands, already had suspended the lama's death sentence for two years; that period expired this week, and the persisting prospect of martyrdom and the unrest it might generate...

Execution debate has urgent tone Supreme Court has eye on Texas legal system 09:57 PM CST on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 By DAVE MICHAELS / The Dallas Morning News AUSTIN – Every two years, the Legislature wrestles with the way the state administers the death penalty. This year, the U.S. Supreme Court will be watching. The high court overturned the sentences of three death row inmates last year because their juries were not able to factor in mitigating evidence, such as mental retardation, that could have justified a lesser sentence. That has prompted some lawmakers to warn that they must...

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Connecticut prosecutors asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to override a judge's decision that allowed an admitted serial killer's execution to be delayed. The high court did not plan on issuing a decision on the matter Wednesday night, the court's clerk told the state public defenders' office. The prosecutors said U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny of Hartford was wrong to postpone Michael Ross' execution in order to schedule a competency hearing that would determine if his mental capacity had diminished from nearly two decades on death row. If prosecutors succeed, Ross will become the first...

Killer who cited Metallica lyrics executed 09:58 PM CST on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 Associated Press Excerpt from http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/012605dntexexecute.4995f.html HUNTSVILLE – A condemned killer who twice avoided execution last year when courts halted his punishment on the day he was to die was executed Tuesday for a slaying in Corpus Christi more than 20 years ago. The execution came after the U.S. Supreme Court refused on a narrow 5-4 vote to block Troy Kunkle's execution. Kunkle was contrite as he looked toward the daughter and son-in-law of his victim, Stephen Horton, and sought their forgiveness. "I would like to ask...

BEIJING (AFP) - An entertainment and property tycoon in southeast China has been sentenced to death for running a prostitution and gambling ring in a case that exposes the close ties between organized crime and officialdom. AFP Photo Chen Kai, who also sought a political career, was sentenced over the weekend at a court in Fuzhou, the city where he committed his crimes and bribed 50 officials to look the other way, Monday's China Daily reported. He was found to be the head of a 21-member gang that ran thinly disguised casinos and brothels catering to newly-rich customers. In what...

HUNTSVILLE - Troy Kunkle met his death Tuesday for the 1984 abduction and fatal shooting of Corpus Christi resident Steven Wayne Horton. Kunkle, 38, was put to death by lethal injection after having faced the chamber on five previous occasions. He was the 338th inmate on Texas' death row to die by lethal injection, the second this year. While strapped to the gurney, Kunkle asked for forgiveness from Horton's daughter, Shawni, then told his family and friends that he loved them. He then recited the Lord's Prayer. "I made a mistake, and I am sorry for what I did," he...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas man was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday for the robbery and murder more than 20 years ago of a man carrying $13 in his wallet. Troy Kunkle, 38, was condemned for killing Steven Horton, 31, in Corpus Christi, Texas, after robbing him on Aug. 12, 1984. Kunkle's execution was delayed for two hours as the U.S. Supreme Court considered last minute appeals by his lawyers. In 1984, Kunkle and three accomplices offered Horton a ride in their car as he walked down a Corpus Christi street. When Horton refused to give up his...

HER dusty file was one of hundreds of thousands of documents stacked in a house in a wealthy neighbourhood of Baghdad. Asma Rasheed married a pilot, lived comfortably in the presidential compound of Saddam Hussein and directed a microbiology programme that was not supposed to exist. Rasheed’s light blue folder has emerged from a huge archive seized by forces loyal to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which opposed Saddam. The archive — a dark who’s who of Iraq — reveals the tiniest details of blandishments and humiliations by a paranoid regime that shared the Nazis’ obsession...

HARTFORD -- At 2:01 a.m. Wednesday, an executioner chosen by the state of Connecticut is scheduled to send a lethal flow of three drugs into the veins of Michael B. Ross, a sexual sadist who murdered six teenagers and two young women in the 1980s. The drama that precedes executions in the United States usually involves head-to-head combat between supporters and opponents, as appeals make their way through the courts. But here, the death row inmate himself holds the most dramatic card: whether to go through with the execution, as he has said he wants, or to make an 11th-hour...

Notwithstanding former President Jimmy Carter's recent statement to the contrary, Undersecretary of State John Bolton's remarks about Cuba's biological weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns with the rogue island only 90 miles from the United States. Bolton, on May 6, told an audience at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation that the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology to Iraq, Syria and Libya, all countries that Cuban President Fidel Castro visited last year. Bolton also made remarks, which may be interpreted as a clear signal of hardening State Department policy toward Cuba, faulting...

Donald Beardslee's execution at San Quentin Prison Wednesday morning was a struggle for dignity. The five guards who labored 16 minutes to insert the lethal injection needles into his arms struggled for composure, their lips tightening as they undoubtedly realized this was taking twice as long as usual. The 30 witnesses gathered in the observation room to watch through the thick glass of the apple-green death chamber struggled to keep their cool as the minutes dragged on, shifting uncomfortably on their feet, crossing and uncrossing their arms. Nervous coughs were the only sounds breaking the tension. And there, being put...