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A judge set a Feb. 21 execution date Wednesday for a Stockton man convicted of murdering a 17-year-old girl in 1981. It would be California's third execution in three months. Michael Morales lost his final court appeal in October when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case. He can still seek clemency from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Morales, now 56, was convicted of choking, beating and stabbing Terri Winchell to death in a remote area of San Joaquin County in January 1981. Prosecution witnesses said a cousin of Morales, Ricky Ortega, had learned Winchell was having an affair with...

"Arnie allows a blind man in a wheelchair to be executed," a headline in Germany's Bild, a popular tabloid declared. "Chalk up one more for the Terminator," Spain's TeleCinco announced. Overseas, but especially in Europe, where the death penalty has been abolished, and many observers view America's practice as barbaric, news media focused on California's execution on Monday of Clarence Ray Allen less than an hour after his 76th birthday. (Scotsman) "Among other things, Allen was nearly deaf, had diabetes and suffered a heart attack last September," one U.K. news outlet noted. Terry Davis, the chairman of the 46-nation Council...

Something happened in the middle of Samuel Alito's triumphant hearings in the Senate last week that shouldn't be allowed to slip by. On Thursday, just as the hearings were winding up, results came back from a Toronto laboratory that DNA testing had affirmed once again that Roger Keith Coleman, executed in 1992 by Virginia for the rape and murder of his sister-in-law, was indeed guilty of the crime.

San Quentin, Calif. (AP) -- In the end, California's oldest condemned inmate wasn't as feeble and frail as his attorneys portrayed him in their efforts to spare his life. With the help of four large correctional officers, Clarence Ray Allen shuffled from his wheelchair to a gurney inside San Quentin State Prison's death chamber early Tuesday morning, a day after his 76th birthday. Though legally blind, Allen raised his head to search among execution witnesses for relatives he had invited. "Hoka hey, it's a good day to die," Allen said in a nod to his Choctaw Indian heritage minutes before...

The oldest man to ever enter California's execution chamber met his doom Tuesday the way he'd wanted to: With the faint lilt of Native American chants ringing in the air around him, and loved ones mouthing "I love you" to him as his damaged vision slowly faded to black. A symbolic Indian feather lay on quadruple murderer Clarence Ray Allen's chest for the entire 33-minute execution, rising and falling until the lethal poisons piped into his veins through intravenous tubes stopped his breathing and he at last lay completely still. "Hoka Hey, (an Indian saying meaning) it's a good day...

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. - California executed its oldest death row inmate early Tuesday, minutes after his 76th birthday, despite arguments that putting to death an elderly, blind and wheelchair-bound man was cruel and unusual punishment. Clarence Ray Allen was pronounced dead at 12:38 a.m. at San Quentin State Prison. He became the second-oldest inmate put to death nationally since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. Allen, who was blind and mostly deaf, suffered from diabetes and had a nearly fatal heart attack in September only to be revived and returned to death row, was assisted into...

Ailing killer executed at age 76 Condemned for 3 slayings, Allen is oldest ever put to death in state Clarence Ray Allen, a twice-convicted murderer enfeebled by age and illness after more than two decades on Death Row, was executed by lethal injection early today at San Quentin State Prison for ordering three killings from his prison cell in 1980. Allen, who turned 76 on Monday, was pronounced dead about 12:38 a.m. He is the oldest prisoner ever executed in California and one of the oldest ever put to death in the United States. His last hope was extinguished Monday...

Hang 'Em High What is the rationale for capital punishment? Before deciding what capital punishment is, it is helpful to understand what it is not. Capital punishment is not revenge, for revenge is "punitive action taken in return for an injury or offense," and clearly supporters of the victim are not taking any action whatsoever. Most victim’s family and friends are in fact abused by a system that dispenses justice at a glacial pace and fills the intervening years between crime and punishment with high-minded advocacy on behalf of the criminal and little regard for the victims (i.e., Tookie Williams)....

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...