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Alito sided with the majority in a 6-3 vote that rejected a last minute request to allow Missouri to carry out the execution of Michael Taylor, 39, by lethal injection at midnight, a court spokesman said on Thursday. He has challenged his death sentence on the grounds that the three-drug cocktail of lethal chemicals used in executions carry the risk of undue suffering, violating the U.S. Constitution's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

BALTIMORE (AP) -- A federal judge today rejected a bid by Vernon Evans to postpone his execution -- the second time in two days Evans' challenges of the state's method of lethal injection have been turned down in court. Evans had asked a federal judge to delay his execution, set for next week, saying the state's planned method of execution could cause him unnecessary and excruciating pain, violating his constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. But U-S District Court Judge Benson Legg ruled that Evans' claims that his years of intravenous drug use had damaged his veins so badly...

ST. LOUIS -- A federal judge in Kansas City was expected to rule Wednesday whether Missouri's administration of the death penalty is constitutional, while the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied the state's request to vacate an inmate's stay of execution. Inmate Michael Taylor of Kansas City had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. The Missouri Department of Corrections was proceeding as if the state's first execution of the year might be carried out as originally planned. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. wrapped up two days of testimony from death penalty and...

Blogging from Death Row An American blogger answers questions from readers around the world on his death row blog from a Baltimore prison. But with his execution date now set for the first week of Febuary, his Internet Q&A site may be short-lived.Vernon Lee Evans has been sitting on death row in Baltimore, Maryland for more than 20 years. He doesn't have a computer or Internet access in his prison cell, but he's still managed to become one of the most-talked about people in the blogosphere. His Web site, meetvernon.blogspot.com, describes his final days on death row before his planned...

On January 17, at the San Quentin State Prison, the State of California executedClarence Ray Allen. Allen had been convicted of a 1982 triple homicide; he had ordered the killings while already serving a prison term for another homicide. Allen had recently sought clemency from Governor Schwarzenegger on the ground that he had become old and infirm, but the Governor denied his plea. Allen also sought a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court, which similarly denied his request. He argued that to execute an old and sick man such as himself would constitute cruel and unusual punishment, in...

An Alabama man who was part of a ring that shuttled drugs from Texas to his home state was executed just after 6 p.m. Wednesday in the state’s death chamber in Huntsville. Marion Dudley was sentenced to die for the slayings of four people in Houston nearly 14 years ago. His attorneys unsuccessfully sought a stay earlier Wednesday from the U.S. Supreme Court. The 33-year-old inmate from Tuscaloosa, Ala. said he wasn't at the southwest Houston house the night of June 20, 1992 massacre. Six people were shot that night, four of them fatally, in what authorities said was a...

Update 5: High Court Steps In, Blocks Fla. Execution By GINA HOLLAND , 01.24.2006, 07:56 PM Florida death row inmate Clarence Hill won a last-minute Supreme Court stay Tuesday night about an hour after he was scheduled to be executed for killing a police officer. It was not clear if the court's intervention would only briefly delay Hill's execution, which had been scheduled for 6 p.m. EST, to give justices additional time to review three separate stay requests. Witnesses had gathered at the Florida State Prison for the execution, which was put off for more than an hour before word...

NEW US military rules mean that executions of condemned "war on terror" detainees could be carried out at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the US Army said today. The new rules authorise the army to set the location for executions "imposed by military courts-martial or military tribunals and authorized by the president of the United States." "Enemy combattants could be affected by this regulation," said Sheldon Smith, a spokesman for the US Army. Only 10 war-on-terror detainees have so far been charged and referred to special military commissions for trial, including Australian David Hicks. The United...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a little-noticed move, the U.S. Army has issued new regulations governing the death penalty, raising speculation that the military might be preparing for its first execution since 1961. "This publication is a major revision," said the document issued January 17 and signed by Sandra Riley, administrative assistant to the secretary of the Army. "This regulation establishes responsibilities and updates policy and procedures for carrying out a sentence of death as imposed by general courts-martial or military tribunals," the document said. There are currently six men on military death row in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. One, Dwight Loving,...

An effort to temporarily halt executions in California died in the Legislature on Thursday when majority Democrats grew concerned that the issue could tag the party's candidates as soft on crime in the fall elections. The measure, which would have created a moratorium while a special commission studied the fairness of California's death penalty, had received a good deal of attention during the campaign last year to stop the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. The co-founder of the Crips gang in Los Angeles died by lethal injection on Dec. 13 for committing four murders. Ron Cottingham, president of the Peace...

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...