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For hundreds of years, doctors have been involved in executions. But their efforts to get out of this grisly business put them on a collision course this week with a federal judge who ordered that they assist in killing a California inmate. "There's been an attempt to medicalize executions all the way back to the French Revolution," when Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin invented the guillotine as a humane method of death, said University of Minnesota bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles. "Doctors then got involved again in designing electrocution for the same reason in the United States," he said. "The medical profession has...

San Francisco - The execution of a man convicted of raping and murdering a 17-year-old girl was postponed Tuesday after two anaesthesiologists who were to ensure a painless death withdrew on ethical grounds. The execution of Michael Morales, 46, had been scheduled for 12.01 a.m. Tuesday after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.S. courts denied his final appeals. But the two anaesthesiologists cited concerns over a last-minute ruling by a judge who ordered them to intervene in the event that Morales woke up or appeared to be in pain from the administering of the lethal combination of drugs. "Any such intervention...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO - The state on Tuesday postponed indefinitely the execution of a condemned killer amid a court battle over the state's method of lethal injection and the role doctors may play in the death chamber.</p> <p>State officials notified the federal courts they would be unable to comply with a judge's order to have a lethal dose of barbiturate administered to Michael Morales by a medical professional in the execution chamber, a spokeswoman for the federal courts told The Associated Press.</p>

SAN QUENTIN, California (Reuters) - The execution of a California man who raped and murdered an 17-year-old girl was delayed for at least 15 hours early on Tuesday because two court-appointed anesthesiologists walked off the job over ethical concerns. The doctors backed out when the language in an early-morning U.S. District Court ruling did not sufficiently allay their ethical concerns, San Quentin State prison spokesman Lt. Vernell Crittendon said. They were on hand after a court said the state must ensure the condemned man, Michael Morales, was in fact unconscious before a lethal injection was administered, thereby minimizing the pain...

Lodi, San Joaquin County -- Terri Lynn Winchell left home on the last night of her life in January 1981 to help a boy she knew hated her. That's just the way she was, friends and family said. Good-hearted. A devout believer in turning the other cheek, in giving people a second chance. But this was a chance she should not have given. By the end of the evening, the 17-year-old church choir singer and high school beauty lay raped, hammered and stabbed to death, her corpse sprawled between two rows of grapevines. She had no inkling of it, but...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to stay the execution of convicted killer Michael Morales. Justice Anthony Kennedy reviewed the case, then sent it to the full court, which denied Morales' final appeal at 6:29 p.m. EST, according to court spokesman Ed Turner. "The court entered orders denying the request for stays of execution," he said. The Supreme court was the only legal option left for Morales, 46, who is scheduled to die from lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. at San Quentin State Prison for killing teenager Terri Winchell, of Lodi. He would become the...

San Francisco -- A California condemned prisoner who murdered, raped and tortured a girl 25 years ago moved a step closer to death when a federal appeals court dismissed on Sunday petitions seeking to block Tuesday's lethal injection. Barring a reprieve by the U.S. Supreme Court, where the case is to be appealed, Michael Morales, 46, is to become the 14th prisoner California has executed since voters reinstated capital punishment in 1978. It would be the third execution at San Quentin State Prison, located a few miles north of here, since the Dec. 13 injection of Crips co-founder Stanley Tookie...

Clyde Smith, 32, was executed just after 6 p.m. Tuesday in the state’s death chamber in Huntsville for the 1992 murder of a cab driver in Houston. Jacobs was shot four times in the head and robbed of about $100. Smith confessed to detectives about the February 1992 slaying and the similar shooting and robbery six weeks later of another cab driver, but later said the confession was made under duress. He later claimed he wasn’t present when Jacobs was slain, but arrived at the scene after the shooting.

Convicted torture killer Robert Neville, Jr., 31, was executed just after 6 p.m. Wednesday in Huntsville for the 1998 slaying of Amy Robinson, 19, of Arlington, a mentally impaired woman with whom he once worked at a grocery store. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the execution earlier Wednesday. Prosecutors say Neville and Michael Wayne Hall, who is also on death row, kidnapped Robinson as she bicycled to work and took her to a remote area of Tarrant County where she was tortured and then shot to death. Neville explained in a TV interview that he and Hall killed...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A paroled burglar who claimed he wanted to be a serial killer of minorities was executed Wednesday night for the torture-slaying eight years ago of a 19-year-old mentally impaired woman who once worked with him. Robert Neville Jr., apologizing profusely, addressed his victim's mother by name as she and her two daughters stood close to the glass with their arms around each other. He expressed love to them. "I hope you can find it in yourselves to forgive me and I hope all this here will kind of settle your pain. And I hope the Lord will...

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...