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LUCASVILLE, Ohio, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- Convicted Cincinnati killer John Hicks, 49, was put to death Tuesday for the cocaine-fueled slayings of his step-daughter and mother-in-law. Hicks confessed to the August 1985 slayings of Brandy Green, 5, and Maxine Armstrong, 56, which he blamed on his addiction to cocaine, The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Cincinnati Post reported. Hicks told police he stole $300 from Armstrong's apartment to buy drugs and strangled the woman. Hicks told authorities he returned later that night and strangled his step-daughter, fearing she might have heard him kill his mother-in-law. On Monday, Ohio Gov. Bob Taft...

On February 28, 1979, Stanley "Tookie" Williams and three other men drove in two cars to a 7-Eleven store in the city of Whittier, California, a suburb southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The lone clerk on duty at the time was 26-year-old Albert Owens, who was sweeping the store's parking lot when the men arrived. Owens apparently believed the men to be legitimate customers, for he put down his broom and dust pan and followed them into the store. Williams, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, forced Owens into a back storeroom. After ordering Owens to lie on the floor, Williams...

SAN`A, Yemen - A suspected al-Qaida ally was executed by a Yemeni firing squad Sunday after being convicted of killing a prominent politician and plotting a deadly attack on three American missionaries in 2002. Ali al-Jarallah was blindfolded and shot in the courtyard of the central prison in the capital, San`a, in the presence of judiciary officials, several reporters and the victim's lawyer. Al-Jarallah was convicted in 2003 of helping plot the attack that killed three missionaries in a Yemeni hospital. He also was convicted of murdering Jarallah Omar, the Yemeni Socialist Party's deputy secretary-general, a few days earlier, and...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea on Saturday called a recent CNN program depicting a public execution in the communist state a "sheer fabrication" and dismissed it as a ratings ploy by the U.S.-based broadcaster. North Korea takes any criticism of its internal affairs sensitively and brands it a part of U.S. conspiracy to topple the government of its leader, Kim Jong-il. CNN earlier this month broadcast a documentary, "Undercover in the Secret State," which among other images showed a grainy clip of what it called a public execution by firing squad of a man accused of helping a refugee cross...

Bus stop an execution site … 1500 years ago By Richard Macey November 26, 2005 Allen Madden and Dr Denise Donion of the University of Sydney with Octavia Man. Photo: Edwina Pickles HIS crime will probably never be known. But "he sure trod on someone's toes", said Allen Madden, cultural and heritage officer for the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council. In January, when EnergyAustralia workers laying cables in Ocean Street, Narrabeen, found human bones beneath a bus stop, they called police. The remains have since been identified as those of an Aborigine who died up to 1500 years ago. Next...

"Let's do it." With those last words, convicted killer Gary Gilmore ushered in the modern era of capital punishment in the United States, an age of busy death chambers that will likely see its 1,000th execution in the coming days. After a 10-year moratorium, Gilmore in 1977 became the first person to be executed following a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision that validated state laws to reform the capital punishment system. Since then, 997 prisoners have been executed, and next week, the 998th, 999th and 1,000th are scheduled to die. Robin Lovitt, 41, will likely be the one to earn...

Convicted murderer and Crips founder, Stanley "Tookie" Williams, set to be executed Dec. 13, has used his prison time to write books urging children to stay out of gangs, among other peace-preaching efforts. Should clemency be given to deathrow inmates who pursue such activities?

Texas executed its fifth teenage offender at 22 minutes after midnight on Aug. 24, 1993, after his last request for bubble gum had been refused and his final claim of innocence had been forever silenced. Ruben Cantu, 17 at the time of his crime, had no previous convictions, but a San Antonio prosecutor had branded him a violent thief, gang member and murderer who ruthlessly shot one victim nine times with a rifle before emptying at least nine more rounds into the only eyewitness — a man who barely survived to testify. Four days after a Bexar County jury delivered...

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he is undecided on whether to grant clemency in the high-profile case of condemned killer Stanley Tookie Williams. Williams, co-founder of the Crips gang, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 13 for the killings of four people. Law enforcement officials have launched an unusually fierce campaign to block clemency, The Los Angeles Times said Friday. Officials are asking the governor to reject pleas from clergy, legislators and entertainers that Williams has redeemed himself by his work on death row to dissuade young people from joining gangs. Speaking to reporters...

KANSAS CITY (AP) - A Kansas woman accused of cutting an unborn baby from her victim’s womb could face the death penalty if convicted of the crimes, federal prosecutors announced yesterday. Lisa Montgomery, 37, of Melvern, Kan., faces trial in April for allegedly strangling 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett with a rope at her Skidmore home, using a kitchen knife for a crude Caesarean section, then parading the infant around as her own. U.S. Attorney Todd Graves had long hinted he would seek death for the defendant, but it was made official yesterday with a court filing outlining aggravating circumstances. The...

Shannon Charles Thomas, 34, was executed just after 6 p.m. Wednesday for the Christmas Eve 1993 murders of three people in Baytown. Two of the victims were children. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the execution Wednesday evening. Thomas was the second inmate to be executed in two days. Robert Dale Rowell, 50, was executed just after 6 p.m. Tuesday in Huntsville for killing two people at a crack house in Houston 12 years ago. Thomas was sentenced to die for the murders of Robert Rios and his two children, Victor 11 and Maria, 10. Prosecutors said Thomas and...

Robert Dale Rowell, 50, was executed just after 6 p.m. Tuesday in Huntsville for killing two people at a crack house in Houston 12 years ago. Rowell had already served a sentence and had allegedly killed a fellow inmate before the bloody rampage in 1993 in which Raymond Mata, 38 and Irvin Wright, 52, were killed. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review Rowell’s case last month. Rowell was the 18th inmate executed this year in Texas and the first of two scheduled to die this week. Condemned inmate Shannon Thomas is scheduled to die Wednesday evening for a triple...

Steven Van McHone was put to death at Central Prison early Friday morning, 15 years after he killed his mother and stepfather at their Surry County home. McHone entered the execution chamber on a gurney at 1:50 a.m., and he appeared to say "I'm so sorry" to Wes Adams Jr., a half-brother whom McHone almost killed the night of the parents' deaths. McHone then exchanged smiles and laughter with his attorney and with two friends, who were among nine people who served as official witnesses. At about 2 a.m., executioners added a sedative to McHone's intravenous lines. He closed his...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Stanley Tookie Williams, a founder of the Crips street gang, is trying to head off a Dec. 13 execution by asking the California Supreme Court to reopen the case, his attorneys said Friday. Among other things, Williams' representatives say forensic testing may have falsely sent him to death row. Williams' lawyer wants California's justices to allow the reexamination of evidence that showed a shotgun registered to Williams was used to kill three people during a motel robbery in 1979. They said conclusions that a shell casing found at the scene matched the shotgun were based on...

A 55-year-old inmate who was condemned for the abduction, sexual assault and beating death of a nine-year-old girl, was executed just after 6 p.m. Thursday in Huntsville. Melvin Wayne White confessed to the slaying of Jennifer Gravell, who lived two houses from him in the small West Texas town of Ozona. White blamed a lifelong drinking problem for the killing, but prosecutors insisted White was a pedophile who used alcohol as an excuse for his actions. Jennifer's father, Charlie Gravell, shot himself to death in May 2003.

...just who is Stanley "Tookie" Williams? Williams, now in his 50s is currently on California's Death Row. It was in his teenage years that Williams befriended Raymond "Truck" Washington and several others local teens in the neighborhood. Williams has similar interest as the other group, including avoiding school, running the streets, drinking and at the age 13, sniffing glue. On February 28, 1979, around 4 AM, Williams had his eye on a 7-Eleven store. After two already unsuccessful robbery attempts, Williams found the store clerk, Albert Owens, out front sweeping the parking lot. Owens, who now would have been a...

EDUCATORS and religious scholars are mostly against letting children watch Shariah court verdicts like beheading, stoning to death, amputation or lashing, a report said Sunday. Exposing children to violent and gruesome scenes may make them aggressive and effect their personality, he said. am of the view that children must be forbidden from watching the execution of Shariah penalties so that we are able to protect our future generations from negative effects, in the same way as some countries that prevent children from watching films with horrifying scenes, Dr. Abdul Aziz Bin Abdullah Al-Dakheel, Assistant Professor of Social Service in King...

While Al Franken continues to have his pick of cable and late night television interviews, there may be signs some are leery of his creepy Rove/Cheney/Bush "execution" rhetoric. Appearing on CNN yesterday, Franken's American Morning interview segment seemed abruptly cut short as soon as he brought up this supposed "joke". Were producers ready and waiting to pull the plug? Interviewer Zain Verjee became visibly uncomfortable as soon as Franken mentioned the "E" word. Was that the planned segment end, after just three minutes?

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (Reuters) - A Missouri man who killed two women by pushing them off a bridge spanning the Mississippi River was put to death early Wednesday, a Missouri prison official said. Marlin Gray, 38, died at 12:07 a.m. CDT after workers at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri, injected him with a series of lethal drugs, stopping his heart.

LUCASVILLE - A cocaine dealer whose role models were mobsters in a city once called the nation’s crime capital was executed Tuesday for killing four men in a bid to seize control of the drug trade in a Youngstown housing project. Willie Williams Jr., 48, died by injection at 10:20 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.