Free Republic

HUNTSVILLE — Lonnie Wayne Pursley kept going to prison for longer and longer terms but also kept getting paroled thanks to a shortage of prison space in Texas in the 1990s.A jury in Polk County ensured he wouldn't get out again when they convicted him in 1999 of capital murder and sentenced him to death for the fatal beating and robbery of a 47-year-old East Texas man.Pursley, 43, was scheduled to receive lethal injection Tuesday evening. He would be the sixth Texas prisoner executed this year.The U.S. Supreme Court last month refused to review his case. Attorneys trying to halt...

Gay blackmailer hanged in Iran 30/04/2005 13:36 - (SA) Tehran - An Iranian convicted of blackmailing his gay partners with videotapes of their sex acts has been hanged, reports said on Saturday. Hadi Safdari was executed in Bojnourd in the eastern province of South Khorasan, the Qods newspaper said citing the local judiciary. In Safadari's case, the death sentence appears to have been handed down for rape, as the blackmail was deemed to have removed any element of consent. But Iran's Islamic regime also imposes the death penalty for consensual "sodomy" where the offence is repeated and the convict is...

I got a few emails from some Christians after my last column, “A Time to Kill,” ran. They found my easiness with executing confessed and convicted child molesters, rapists and murderers to be offensive and un-Christ like. They stated that I showed a “lack of love” for these culprits whom Christ “cares for,” and that I should “err on the side of mercy” towards these marauders and “love my enemies,” as this would be “the Christian thing to do.” Yes, I was electronically told by this, merciful-to-the-molester-minority, who thinks they’re siding with God when they support sustaining killers who forcefully...

The military has not executed one of its own since 1961, while states have put scores of civilian killers to their deaths. Specialists say the key difference in military justice is the role of the president, who unlike a governor, must take an active role in signing off when a service member gets the ultimate punishment.

ATMORE - Mario Giovanni Centobie, a killer and escape artist, smiled slightly and gave a thumbs-up before he was executed Thursday night for the 1998 murder of Moody police Officer Keith Turner. Centobie, strapped to a gurney, stared at the ceiling, fidgeted nervously, repeatedly broke into a grin and sometimes nodded his head. He said nothing. He didn't acknowledge his mother or brother sitting in a witness room to his right, or the relatives and co-workers of Turner in a separate witness room straight ahead. Divorced for 10 years, Centobie wore his wedding ring. He was pronounced dead at 6:22...

CLOUDCROFT, N.M. -- The man who shot and killed an Otero County sheriff's deputy in December already had been wounded and subdued when he was shot, a prosecutor said. District Attorney Scott Key has been tightlipped about the investigation and voluntary manslaughter indictment against Otero County sheriff's Sgt. Billy Anders in the death of Earl Flippen. But Key told the Albuquerque Journal that Flippen was wounded and handcuffed and was not a threat when he was shot again. A medical examiner's report released this week says Flippen's body arrived for an autopsy with his hands cuffed behind his back. The...

BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) - An inmate who fatally stabbed his grandmother more than 30 times to get cash for crack cocaine was executed early Wednesday in Missouri's new death chamber. Donald Jones, 38, died by injection at 12:07 a.m. at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center. Jones' relatives had asked Gov. Matt Blunt to spare his life, arguing the 68-year-old victim would not have sought vengeance against her grandson. Blunt declined to intervene Tuesday, for the second time in a little more than a month refusing to grant clemency to a condemned inmate despite a recommendation to do...

Facing execution shortly after midnight for murdering his grandmother 12 years ago, Donald Jones met with relatives Tuesday evening and hoped for a reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court. Jones, 38, was to die by lethal injection shortly after 12:01 a.m. at the new state prison in Bonne Terre, Mo. He visited with his family in a waiting room that is next to the death chamber. This morning, Gov. Matt Blunt denied a request by Jones’ family that he reduce the sentence to life in prison. Shortly after 6 p.m., the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis...

AUSTIN, Texas - (KRT) - With its criminal justice system the subject of intense scrutiny for a crime lab scandal and a series of wrongful convictions, a Texas state Senate committee heard testimony Tuesday about the possibility that Texas had experienced the ultimate criminal justice nightmare: the execution of an innocent person. Fourteen months after Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in the nation's busiest death chamber, a renowned arson expert and Willingham's lawyer told the Senate Criminal Justice Committee that they believed Willingham might well have been innocent but found nobody willing to listen to their claim in the days...

 Works for me.... 

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's most powerful Shiite bloc wants Saddam Hussein put to death if he is convicted of war crimes by a special tribunal, and the interim president should resign if he refuses to sign the execution order, an alliance spokesman told The Associated Press on Monday. Ali al-Dabagh, a lawmaker from the clergy-led United Iraq Alliance, which received the most votes in Jan. 30 national elections, said everyone in his party believes Saddam should be sentenced to death if convicted of war crimes against Iraqis. "We feel he is a criminal. He is the No. 1 criminal in...

As many as four of every 10 prisoners put to death in the United States might receive inadequate anesthesia, causing them to remain conscious and experience blistering pain during a lethal injection. Researchers in Florida and Virginia drew this conclusion after reviewing levels of anesthetic in the blood of 49 inmates after they were executed. "I approached this as a physician," said the study's lead author, Dr. Leonidas Koniaris, chairman of surgical oncology at the University of Miami. "We were asking: Is there a possibility of awareness during an execution? Is there a large degree of pain and suffering associated...

Health - HealthDay U.S. Executions by Lethal Injection May Not Be Humane 1 hour, 3 minutes ago Health - HealthDay THURSDAY, April 14 (HealthDay News) -- Prisoner executions by lethal injection in the United States may not be painless or humane, and may not even meet veterinary standards for putting down animals. So claims a research letter in this week's issue of The Lancet. The authors concluded that prisoners executed by lethal injection may have experienced awareness and unnecessary suffering as they died because they weren't properly sedated. Anesthesia during lethal injection is essential to minimize the prisoner's suffering. Lethal...

Jim Robinson is the founder and operator of FreeRepublic.com. He posted this editorial on Terri Schiavo, Sunday April 3rd. I said it was wrong to kill her. That is my opinion. Nothing can change it. No list of "facts" will ever change it. And I put "facts" in quotes because most of the so-called "facts" posted here were in fact "opinion." Whether it was a poster's opinion, a reporter's opinion, her husband's opinion, a relative's opinion, a supporter's opinion, a detractor's opinion, a politician's opinion, a lawyer's opinion, a doctor's opinion, the president's opinion, the governor's opinion, or even...

The execution of Terri Schiavo -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: April 4, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc. Terri Schiavo is dead. She did not die a natural death, unless you believe a court order to cut off food and water to a disabled woman until she dies of starvation and thirst is natural. No, Terri Schiavo was executed by the state of Florida. Her crime? She was so mentally disabled as to be unworthy of life in the judgment of Judge George Greer. The execution was carried out at Woodside Hospice. An autopsy will reveal that Terri's vital organs...

URGENT ACTION USA (Georgia): Death penalty / Legal concern, Terry Mincey PUBLIC AI Index: AMR 51/150/2001 EXTRA 70/01 Death penalty / Legal concern 16 October 2001 USA (Georgia) Terry Mincey, white, aged 40 Terry Mincey is scheduled to be executed in Georgia on 25 October. He has spent more than 19 years - almost half his life - on death row. He was sentenced to death for the murder of Paulette Riggs in 1982. Paulette Riggs was shot dead on 12 April 1982 during a robbery of the store in Macon where she worked. A second person, Russell Peterman, was...

S. Korea bars secret video of the North A tape of a public execution, smuggled into South Korea, is kept off the air. By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - On a bleached and scratchy video image smuggled out of Kim Jong Il's closed regime, blindfolded prisoners are tied to white posts on a rocky landscape, shot three times, and dragged away. The rare video footage of summary executions in North Korea - a practice considered routine in the North but never captured on film - was taken by hidden camera March...

NEW LONDON (AP) -- When Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford ruled in December that serial killer Michael Ross was mentally competent to accept his death sentence, he relied on the report of a state psychiatrist. When a second competency hearing is held next month, he will hear from four doctors: two working for special counsel Thomas Groark, one for Ross and one working at Clifford's request. Clifford and the attorneys in the case want to avoid a repeat of January's attempted execution, which was abruptly halted amid questions over Ross' competency. In February, Clifford appointed Groark to investigate and argue...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - Texas' highest appeals court stopped the scheduled execution Wednesday of a man about five hours before he could have been put to death in the 1989 slaying of a restaurant manager. Steven K. Staley, 42, won the reprieve after lawyers argued that instructions given to jurors at his 1991 trial were unclear when they were deciding whether he should get the death penalty. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sent the case back to a trial court. "This is good news," said Jack Strickland, one of Staley's attorneys. Staley was condemned for the 1989 slaying of...

Campaign To end The Death Penalty. Join Efforts to End State Sponsored Killing in the USA Encourage Worldwide Abolition Around 118 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. On average, in the past decade more than three countries a year have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Despite international human rights standards, some nations still execute people. Around the world, the death penalty is used as a tool of political repression and a means to forever silence political opponents or eliminate politically "troublesome" individuals. Learn more » - China, Iran, the United States, and Viet Nam...