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California's oldest death row inmate _ a 75-year-old who is legally blind and nearly deaf _ is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to do something it has never done before: block an execution because of the condemned man's advanced age and infirmity. Clarence Ray Allen's attorneys contend that executing a feeble old man amounts to cruel and unusual punishment banned by the U.S. Constitution. Allen is set to die by injection Tuesday for ordering three slayings while behind bars for another murder. He has been on death row for more than 23 years. Allen, who turns 76 on the eve...

It was 1980, and Bryon Schletewitz was planning to take over his family's general store in Fresno so his parents could retire. Josephine Rocha was looking forward to being a high school senior and had taken a part-time job at the market to pay for her new car. Douglas White worked at the shop while going to college and hoped to start a real estate business with his mother someday. But on a warm evening that year, the three were shot to death as part of a revenge plot cooked up in a Folsom Prison cafeteria. The scheme's architect, Clarence...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new DNA test confirmed the guilt of a Virginia man who proclaimed his innocence up until his 1992 execution for rape and murder, the Virginia governor's office said on Thursday. "We have sought the truth using DNA technology not available at the time the (Virginia) Commonwealth carried out the ultimate criminal sanction" against Roger Keith Coleman, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner said in a statement. "The confirmation that Roger Coleman's DNA was present reaffirms the verdict and the sanction." Coleman was executed in May 1992 for the 1981 rape and murder of his 19-year-old sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy....

RICHMOND, Va. - New DNA tests confirmed the guilt of a man who went to his death in Virginia's electric chair in 1992 proclaiming his innocence, the governor said Thursday. The case had been closely watched by both sides in the death penalty debate because no executed convict in the United States has ever been exonerated by scientific testing.

The California Supreme Court today moved condemned inmate Clarence Ray Allen a step closer to execution, rejecting his latest bid for a reprieve based on the argument he is too old and sick to be put to death. In a brief order, the court without explanation unanimously refused to delay Allen's execution, scheduled for shortly after midnight Monday. Allen can still hope for clemency from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has yet to make a decision on his fate, and also try last-ditch legal appeals in the federal courts. But time is running out for Allen, who has lost repeated rounds...

Editor's Note: African-Americans who rallied for clemency for Stanley "Tookie" Williams must do the same for Clarence Ray Allen, a non-black, 76-year-old blind man just weeks away from execution, the writer says. LOS ANGELES--In the wee hours of the morning on Jan. 17, another man will be put to death by lethal injection in the State of California. This comes exactly 36 days after the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. But where are the protesters? With less than a month to go before the scheduled execution of a 76-year-old blind, deaf and wheelchair-confined man, there has been no public outcry...

RICHMOND, Va. - Gov. Mark R. Warner on Thursday ordered DNA evidence retested to determine whether a man convicted of rape and murder was innocent when he was executed in 1992. If the testing shows Roger Keith Coleman did not rape and kill his sister-in-law in 1981, it will be the first time in the United States a person has been exonerated by scientific testing after his execution, according to death penalty opponents. Warner said he ordered the tests because of technological advances that could provide a level of forensic certainty not available in the 1980s. "This is an extraordinarily...

With less than two weeks left in Gov. Mark R. Warner's term, time is running out for him to arrange DNA testing that could determine whether Virginia sent an innocent man to the electric chair in 1992. If the tests show Roger Keith Coleman did not rape and murder his sister-in-law in 1981, it will mark the first time in the United States an executed person has been scientifically proved innocent, say death penalty opponents, who are keenly aware that such a result could have a powerful effect on public opinion. "I think it would be the final straw for...

SACRAMENTO - California's capital punishment debate -- ignited by the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams -- will likely intensify as the state prepares to carry out death sentences at a pace unseen in more than a generation. Williams, the quadruple murderer and co-founder of the Crips whose tale of redemption failed to spare his life last month, was the 12th inmate executed in California since voters reinstated capital punishment nearly three decades ago. In 2006, four inmates could enter the execution chamber, including the state's oldest death row resident, 75-year-old Clarence Ray Allen, according to the state attorney general's office....

KCBS) - The lawyer for the next inmate scheduled for execution at San Quentin has renewed his argument for clemency, appealing to the governor to spare what remains of 75-year-old Clarence Ray Allen's life. Allen is scheduled to die by lethal injection on January 17, one day after his 76th birthday. He would be the oldest inmate California has ever put to death. His attorney, Michael Satris, argues in a clemency letter sent to Governor Schwarzenegger on Tuesday that killing such an old man is "cruel and unusual" under both the state and federal constitutions. "He poses no danger to...

MANKATO, Minn. -- More than 20 American Indians rode into downtown Mankato on horseback while dozens more completed a relay run that began at Fort Snelling to commemorate the 144th anniversary of the largest mass execution in U.S. history. On Monday, the riders, who had set out from the Lower Sioux reservation near Morton four days earlier, formed a circle around four drummers on the site of the execution. Tribal leaders delivered a message of hope, The Free Press reported. "This is not about the chaos of a war,'' said Sheldon Peters Wolfchild, chairman of the Lower Sioux Community. "It's...

Sacramento -- Amid the uproar over last week's execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, state lawmakers for the most part were notably silent. California politicians largely avoided the death penalty debate as advocates and opponents argued in newspapers and on television over whether the Crips co-founder and eventual anti-gang crusader deserved to live or die, and whether capital punishment was justice or barbarism. A petition asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to spare Williams by granting him clemency was circulated among legislative Democrats, but only nine -- out of 73 in the Assembly and Senate -- signed it. As five Democrats prepare to...

A federal judge in San Francisco rejected a stay of execution Friday for a 75-year-old man who is scheduled to be executed next month at San Quentin State Prison. Clarence Ray Allen had asked for the stay so he could be treated for a number of ailments, which would help him prepare for a clemency petition with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said his attorney Michael Satris. In his federal lawsuit, Allen said laser eye surgery would allow him to participate in tests that would determine if he suffers from organic brain damage. His lawyers say Allen is legally blind. In addition,...

Furious politicians from Arnold Schwarzenegger's home city have turned on him over his refusal to stop the execution of a reformed gangster. Councillors in the Austrian city of Graz yesterday voted to remove the California governor's name from the local football stadium. The move comes after the Terminator star denied clemency to convicted murderer Stanley 'Tookie'Williams, 51, the co-founder of Los Angeles' notorious Crips gang. Graz deputy mayor Walter Ferk said: said: 'It is annoying that we are being criticised because of Schwarzenegger's actions in California. 'It is not exactly admirable for us to be connected with the death penalty....

One day after notorious gang leader and vicious killer Tookie Williams was executed in California -- despite weeks of very vocal, vociferous, protests by Hollywood stars, political and civil rights leaders -- another man was executed in Mississippi. John B. Nixon, Sr. was 77 years old when he was executed December 14, 2005. He was the oldest man to be executed since the death penalty was reestablished in 1976 and the oldest to be executed since 1916. Unlike the Tookie Williams execution, there were no protests about this execution. There were no claims about discrimination when imposing the death penalty...

PARCHMAN, Miss. (AP) — A 77-year-old convicted hitman was executed Wednesday, becoming the oldest person in the nation put death since capital punishment was reinstated nearly three decades ago. John B. Nixon Sr. still claimed innocence as he was strapped to the death chamber gurney, and blamed one of his sons for the 1985 murder of a Mississippi woman.

PARCHMAN, Miss. - Hired killer John B. Nixon Sr. was put to death Wednesday by lethal injection, but not before he claimed one of his sons carried out the 1985 murder of a Mississippi woman. "I did not kill Virginia Tucker," Nixon said from the death chamber gurney. "I know within my heart, and it hurts to acknowledge, that it was a son of mine and a Spanish friend and another man from Jackson." Nixon, 77, did not identify which of his sons he was blaming, but said he believed his oldest son, John B. Nixon Jr., did not know...

Prison Officials Say Nixon Calm As Execution Approaches POSTED: 7:20 am CST December 14, 2005 UPDATED: 5:10 pm CST December 14, 2005 PARCHMAN, Miss. -- Convicted hitman John B. Nixon, Sr., spent the final hours before his scheduled execution Wednesday visiting with relatives, and prison officials described him as calm and tranquil. The 77-year-old man ate a breakfast of two eggs, two sausage patties, two pieces of white bread, coffee and milk. Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps said Nixon declined to eat lunch, saving room for a last meal. The execution -- Mississippi's first since 2002 -- was set for 6...

With the failure of a high-profile clemency bid for Stanley Tookie Williams, legal observers say a reprieve seems even less likely for two more death row inmates who are facing execution in coming months -- and the pace of capital punishment could increase in California over the next two years.Hours after Williams was put to death on Tuesday, death penalty opponents vowed to renew their efforts against the execution of 75-year-old Clarence Ray Allen of Fresno, scheduled for Jan. 17, by arguing that no civilized society should kill a prisoner who is elderly, partially blind and confined to a wheelchair.

Even before convicted murderer, Crips gang co-founder and anti-gang activist Stanley Tookie Williams was executed early Tuesday, death-penalty opponents had begun looking ahead to their battle's next phase. Statements issued Monday by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Death Penalty Focus and Amnesty International excoriated Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for denying Williams clemency, but also urged support for a bill to halt California's executions at least until a bipartisan commission reports at 2007's end on the death penalty's fairness. The Assembly Public Safety Committee is scheduled to hear that bill, AB 1121, on Jan. 10 — exactly one week...