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The US has carried out the 1,000th execution since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1976. Kenneth Boyd, a convicted killer, was put to death by lethal injection in North Carolina for the murder of his estranged wife and her father in 1988. He was given three drugs - one to put him to sleep, another to paralyse him, and a third to stop his heart. Boyd, 57, has said the death penalty is "nothing but revenge". Relatives of his victims say he deserves to die. Boyd was pronounced dead at 0215 (0715 GMT), state Department of Correction spokeswoman Pam Walker...

These are the grizzly crime scene and autopsy photos released by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office in the case of convivted quadruple murderer and coward Tookie Williams. Hey, Mike Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Snoop Dogg, Bianca Jagger, Jesse Jackson, Margaret Cho, Mike Farrell, Jason Alexander, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Bonnie Raitt, and Noah Wyle -- Explain Tookie's redemption now?

CONVICTED drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van showed courage going to his death, his lawyer said today. The 25-year-old was executed in Singapore at 6am local time (9am AEDT), while his mother Kim grieved with friends and relatives at a nearby church at the scheduled time of the hanging. "I know that he died the courageous death that he planned for himself and died as an optimistic young man, making us all extremely proud of him," lawyer Lex Lasry QC told ABC radio. Mr Lasry said he thought the case would have a long-lasting impact. "This case and its impact is...

SINGAPORE - Singapore executed a 25-year-old Australian on Friday for drug trafficking, despite numerous appeals from the Australian government and hours after the condemned man had a "beautiful last visit" with his family. Nguyen Tuong Van was hanged before dawn as a dozen friends and supporters, dressed in black, kept an overnight vigil outside the maximum-security prison. His twin brother, Nguyen Khoa, was dressed in white. Vigils were also held in cities around Australia, with bells and gongs sounding 25 times at the hour of his execution. "The sentence was carried out this morning at Changi Prison," the Home Affairs...

IT was his last wish: to walk unshackled and confidently, rosary beads hidden in his grip, to the gallows. After a day of tears and goodbyes, and a night of prayer, Australian drug-trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van had accepted his fate and was ready to be hanged at 6am (9am AEST) today in Singapore's Changi prison. The former Melbourne salesman, 25, was said yesterday to be frightened by the method of his death but comforted by his newfound Christian faith in going to "somewhere good". It was the final farewell to mother Kim and twin brother, Khoa, that was to dominate...

As the 1993 execution of a San Antonio man comes under new scrutiny, Bexar County's district attorney raised the possibility Wednesday of prosecuting the only eyewitness in the case — the same person who recently came forward to say Texas executed an innocent man. The witness, a Mexican national who was shot nine times on the same night his friend was murdered, told a jury in 1985 that Ruben Cantu was the killer. Since then, he has recanted, telling the Houston Chronicle that detectives pressured him into picking the then-17-year-old Cantu out of a photo lineup and providing the key...

Vigils, prayers mark Nguyen execution 02dec05 VAN Tuong Nguyen went to the gallows this morning amid silent protests in Australia and a vigil by his twin brother at Singapore's Changi Prison. The Australian drug trafficker was to be hanged at 6am local time (9am AEDT) after the Singapore government ruled out any last-minute reprieve. There was no immediate official notification of the execution, but in Melbourne a church where Nguyen went to school tolled its bell 25 times - once for every year of his life. In Singapore and in cities across Australia, there were protest vigils to mark the...

NOTE: More than 600 death row inmates who had been sentenced to death between 1967 and 1972 had their death sentences lifted as a result of Furman, but the numbers quickly began to build up again as states enacted revised legislation tailored to satisfy the Supreme Court's objections to arbitrary imposition of death sentences. The first execution under the new death penalty laws took place on January 17, 1977, when convicted murdered Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah. Gilmore's was the first execution in the United States since 1967. After Gilmore, 998 more have been executed. Tookie...

The United States will likely reach this week the grim milestone of 1,000 executions of convicts since 1976, although capital punishment is declining with fewer juries choosing death sentences. A convicted murderer was put to death by lethal injection in Ohio on Tuesday, making him the 999th executed inmate since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment 29 years ago. John Hicks, 49, was killed by lethal injection in the prison of Lucasville, Ohio, state prison authorities said. Hicks was sentenced to death over the 1985 murder of his mother-in-law and five-year-old step-daughter. He was under the influence of drugs during...

RALEIGH, N.C., Nov. 30 (UPI) -- North Carolina prepared for an execution Friday that would be the 1,000th since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. On Tuesday, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner granted clemency to Robin Lovitt, 42, who was convicted of killing a man during a 1999 Arlington, Va., pool hall robbery. Lovitt's reprieve put Kenneth Lee Boyd, 57, in line to become the 1,000th convict put to death since reinstatement of the death penalty, the Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer reported. Boyd was convicted in the 1988 slayings of his estranged wife, Julie Boyd, and...

RALEIGH, N.C. - A killer on North Carolina's death row worried Wednesday about becoming a macabre footnote to history — the 1,000th person executed in the U.S. since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. "I'd hate to be remembered as that," 57-year-old Kenneth Lee Boyd told The Associated Press in a prison interview. "I don't like the idea of being picked as a number." But with no doubt of Boyd's guilt in the shooting deaths of his estranged wife and her father in 1988, it appeared unlikely the courts or Gov. Mike Easley would stop the execution, set for 2...

Virginia Gov. Mark Warner yesterday granted clemency to convicted murderer Robin Lovitt, commuting his death sentence to life in prison and so delaying the 1,000th execution since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976. However, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said America’s landmark 461,500th murder since 1976 should proceed on schedule. “Our clients and future clients tell us that the domestic murder industry continues to be robust despite a decline in production in recent years,” said the unnamed ACLU source. “Americans should not worry that the stalled death penalty rate will hinder these...

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...