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STARKE, Fla. - Death penalty opponents criticized the execution of a convicted murderer who took more than half an hour to die and needed a rare second dose of lethal chemicals. Angel Nieves Diaz, 55, convicted of murdering a Miami topless bar manager 27 years ago, appeared to grimace before dying Wednesday, 34 minutes after the first dose. Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said she doesn't believe Diaz felt any pain and had liver disease, which required the second dose. "It was not unanticipated. The metabolism of the drugs to the liver is slowed," Plessinger said. Diaz's cousin Maria...

Execution set for Arkansas man in 1994 kidnap-rape-murder Associated Press TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - The government has set an April 16 federal execution for an Arkansas man convicted in the 1994 kidnapping and death of a 16-year-old girl who was raped, beaten and buried alive after her abduction was recorded in a desperate 911 call. Bruce Carneil Webster, 33, of Pine Bluff, Ark., is scheduled to die by injection at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute at 7 a.m. that day, the Bureau of Prisons said in a news release. Webster and another man on the federal death row here,...

Less than a day before Jerome Henderson was scheduled to die for the 1985 stabbing death of a neighbor, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a stay of his execution by lethal injection. Henderson, 47, was set to be executed Tuesday morning for the aggravated murder and robbery of 26-year-old Mary Acoff during a break-in at her Cincinnati home on March 3, 1985. He was also convicted of the attempted rape of Acoff, whose 10-year-old daughter found her lying in a pool of blood, nude from the waist down. [Snip] Earlier this year, Henderson joined a lawsuit brought by fellow Ohio...

Saudi Government-Appointed Executioner for Mecca, Abdallah Al-Bishi, Discusses His Calling and Demonstrates His Weapons and Methods Following are excerpts from an interview with the executioner for Mecca, Abdallah Al-Bishi, which aired on LBC TV on November 4, 2006. Reporter: This is the most renowned executioner in Saudi Arabia, Abdallah Bin Sa'id Al-Bishi, who carries out the executions. His sword delineates the border between seriousness and play. There is no negotiating with him, once the heads have ripened. When it's harvesting time, he is the most suited for the job. Abdallah Al-Bishi: I started to work in this field after the...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - Texas executed a man on Wednesday by lethal injection for the 1992 murder of a man whom he shot dead during a car hijacking outside a Houston shopping center. Willie Shannon, 33, was convicted of the slaying of Benjamin Garza who was waiting for his wife and children in his car when he was attacked. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said Shannon, who was then 19 years old, entered the passenger side of the car and shot Garza in the head after a brief struggle. He was later apprehended after being spotted driving the stolen...

Saddam Hussein has been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging.he former Iraqi leader was convicted over the killing of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail following an assassination attempt on him in 1982. His half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar were also sentenced to death. Former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan got life in jail and three others received 15-year prison terms. Another co-defendant, Baath party official Mohammed Azawi Ali, was acquitted. Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants will be given the right to appeal, but that is expected...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas – Gregory Summers was executed Wednesday for initiating a murder-for-hire plot that authorities said led to the fatal stabbing of his parents and an uncle. Gregory Summers The lethal injection of Summers, 48, came more than seven years after the execution of Andrew Cantu, convicted of taking the $10,000 offer and fatally stabbing Gene and Helen Summers, both 64, and Billy Mack Summers, 60. Their home in Abilene was set on fire after they were attacked and their bodies were found in the rubble. Gregory Summers was the 22nd inmate executed this year in Texas, the nation's most...

Livingston - A man scheduled to be executed for murdering a store clerk committed suicide early on Thursday in his death-row cell, less than 18 hours before he was scheduled to be executed, a prison official said. Michael Dewayne Johnson slashed his throat with a makeshift blade fashioned from a small piece of metal attached to a wooden stick, said Michelle Lyons, spokesperson for the Texas department of criminal justice in Huntsville. Prison guards had been checking on Johnson's welfare every 15 minutes, as is customary, when they He was transported to a hospital in nearby Livingston, where he was...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's prime minister says Saddam Hussein's execution would help undermine the insurgency as the ex-president's genocide trial heard more testimony Thursday of poison gas attacks on Kurdish villages two decades ago. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he hoped the trial, which began in August, would not last long and "shortly a death sentence will be passed against this criminal tyrant, his aides and the criminals who worked with him." "Definitely, with his execution, those betting on returning to power under the banner of Saddam and the Baath (Party) will lose," al-Maliki told reporters Wednesday in Najaf. Saddam...

http://www.unpo.org/article.php?id=5632 Ahwazi: Three Ahwazis Face Execution UNPO, Netherlands - Oct 16, 2006 ...Such racism against non-Persian minorities is endemic in Iran - Arabs are criminals, Azeris are stupid, Balochis are drug smugglers, etc - and is intended to ...

Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney general who is one of Saddam Hussein's lawyers, said that any death sentence against the former Iraqi president would increase violence in the strife-torn country. "It seems clear that a guilty verdict will set off catastrophic violence" and that a death sentence would be even worse, Clark told a Washington press conference. "It's hard to know how many Iraqis, dozens, hundreds, thousands, will die because of the sentence," he said.

SAN JOSE A judge weighing whether the state's lethal injection method is an unconstitutionally cruel punishment said Friday that the issue hinges on whether the condemned inmate is aware of what's happening. "The critical question, I guess, the court has to look at is what evidence there is of consciousness," U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel said at the conclusion of the four day hearing. Until a ruling, which Fogel expects to issue in November, executions in the state are on hold. Fogel halted the execution of rapist and murderer Michael Morales in February after his lawyers claimed inmates were suffering...

SAN JOSE One of two anesthesiologists who bowed out of participating in the February lethal injection of a condemned inmate, prompting a stay of execution, testified Thursday that he didn't want to be "painted as an executioner." Dr. Robert Singler of Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa volunteered to monitor the execution of Michael Morales, but later declined after learning he may have to participate rather than solely monitor the prisoner's consciousness. Singler testified during the federal court hearing, looking at whether California's lethal injection method is unconstitutionally cruel, that he had agreed only to stand by the inmate...

Sheikh Zana’ gang became the first group that have formally been executed by the Kurdistan Regional Government’s authorities, reported local media in Kurdistan on Thursday. The group of 11 people were hanged in the capital of Kurdistan, Arbil on Thursday. The group was named after their leader Zana Nasrat Sheikh Abdulkarim Barzinji, known as Sheikh Zana. The group members confessed to their crimes on Kurdistan’s TV few months ago.

Medical logs of past state executions showed that some patients might have been conscious during the lethal injection procedure because the sedatives were mixed by prison staffers with no medical background, an anesthesiologist testified Wednesday. Dr. Mark Heath of Columbia University also testified that records from San Quentin State Prison executions show that some of the drugs taken from the prison pharmacy that weren't used went missing. "For each execution, there's 15 vials missing," Heath said during the second day of court hearings challenging California's lethal injection method. He added, "There were errors in mixing drugs." The hearing was called...

Executions of 3 Christian militants sparks violence in Indonesia By Associated Press Friday, September 22, 2006 - Updated: 07:45 AM EST PALU, Indonesia - Christian mobs torched cars, blockaded roads and looted Muslim-owned shops in violence touched off by Friday’s executions of three Roman Catholics convicted of instigating attacks on Muslims. Some 200 inmates escaped after mobs assaulted a jail in the town of Atambua, sending guards fleeing to the nearby jungle. By midday only 20 had been recaptured, deputy national police chief Lt. Gen. Adang Dorodjatun said, calling on the others to turn themselves in. And on the island...

Executions of Christians spark riots Melbourne Herald Sun - HUNDREDS of Indonesians angered by the overnight executions of three Christians rioted in eastern Indonesia today, looting, throwing rocks and torching an official's home. The violence broke out after Fabianus ...

PALU, Indonesia, SEPT. 21, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Three Catholics convicted of leading a mob that killed Muslims were executed by a police firing squad in Central Sulawesi province, officials said. Fabianus Tibo, 60; Marinus Riwu, 48; and Dominggus da Silva, 42, were sentenced to death in 2001. They were found guilty of leading a mob in a 2000 attack that killed 200 people at an Islamic boarding school during Muslim-Christian clashes in Central Sulawesi's Poso region. "It has been done ... the location was around the airport," a police official who declined to be identified told Reuters. The executions occurred today....

THREE Indonesian Christians who were on death row for inciting violence against Muslims in 2000 were executed by firing squad, their lawyer said. "They have been executed....," lawyer Roy Rening said. Mr Rening said he was informed of the executions by the prosecutors office in Palu, the capital of Central Sulawesi province.... < snip > Mr Rening added that he refused to be present at the deaths to protest a rejection by the state of their last demands, including that their bodies be laid in wake at Palu's main Catholic church. < snip > The trio were initially scheduled to...

Palu (AsiaNews) – Indonesian authorities have denied the three Catholic men sentenced to death the right to attend mass one last time before they are executed tonight by a firing squad. The Prosecutor’s Office in Palu has decided that Fabianus Tibo, Marinus Riwu and Dominggus da Silva cannot receive the “spiritual guidance” hitherto provided by Fr Jimmy Tumbelaka in Petobo Prison, this according to Father Tumbelaka himself, who is also parish priest at Poso’s Saint Therese Parish church. The clergyman added that the prosecutor also banned a chapel of rest in Palu St Mary’s Cathedral for the three men as...