Free Republic

A condemned inmate wants to leave them laughing. Patrick Knight is collecting jokes and will pick the funniest one for his last statement before he is set to die June 26 for shooting his neighbors, Walter and Mary Werner, to death almost 16 years ago outside Amarillo. Randall County Sheriff Joel Richardson thinks the whole idea is insensitive. "This tells you a little bit about the guy's character, anyway," said Richardson, who was chief deputy at the time of the Werners' killings and plans to witness Knight's execution. Richardson said that the Werners' son, who has since moved out of...

It took two days for the young Muslim assassin to calm his nerves before the slaying. Then, Mohama Waekaji says, he walked one cool morning to a rice mill, carrying a knife and following orders from a guerrilla commander to behead the 72-year-old Buddhist owner. He asked the elderly man, Juan Kaewtongprakam, for some rice husks. As he turned to collect them, Waekaji says, he slashed the blade through the man's neck. --SNIP-- "These groups do take their cues from ... hardcore Islamic thought coming out of the Arab world. Beheading infidels not only shocks, but also demonstrates Islamic bona...

A neighbor in a suburban Austin neighborhood appeared to be the perfect babysitter for Eryn Baugh's infant son and his 2-year-old sister. "She's the most sweet, endearing person in the world and put forward this good Christian front," Baugh said of Cathy Lynn Henderson, who lived two blocks away. "She could sell snow to an Eskimo." But just weeks after Henderson started working for the Baughs, 3-month-old Brandon was dead and Henderson had fled the state. The infant's body was found buried 60 miles away with his skull crushed, wrapped in his yellow-trimmed white blanket and stuffed into a box...

Killer who shunned appeals is executed May 23, 2007 FLORENCE, Ariz. – A condemned killer who fought to drop his appeals, saying he owed it to his victims, was executed yesterday by injection. Robert Charles Comer, 50, was the first inmate put to death in Arizona since 2000. He had been convicted for a 1987 crime spree in which he killed a camper east of Phoenix and raped a woman in front of her boyfriend. Comer was quiet as he lay strapped to a gurney before his execution. He looked around at the more than 20 witnesses. When the warden...

Despite organized medicine's efforts to keep doctors away from the death chamber, judicial tussles draw them into the process. Organized medicine repeatedly has declared it unethical for doctors to participate in capital punishment. Still, some federal judges, politicians and prison officials largely have disregarded these ethical statements, saying doctor participation is necessary for lethal injection to withstand constitutional scrutiny. The death penalty is on hold in 13 of the 38 states where it is allowed. In 11 of those states, the stays are related to questions over whether lethal injection protocols could sometimes leave the condemned conscious as paralytic and...

New Jersey to consider abolishing death penalty Tue May 8, 2007 2:43PM EDT By Jon Hurdle PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - New Jersey lawmakers will consider abolishing the death penalty this week, starting a process that could see the liberal state become the first to scrap capital punishment since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976. On Thursday, the judiciary committee of the state Senate will consider two bills calling for New Jersey to replace execution with life imprisonment without parole. Capital punishment in the state is already suspended under a moratorium passed by legislators in late 2005. Sen. Ray Lesniak,...

HUNTSVILLE — A street gang member convicted of fatally shooting an Amarillo couple during a botched beer theft at their grocery store more than a dozen years ago was executed this evening. Ryan Dickson, 30, spoke rapidly when asked if he had anything to say, expressing love to his family and apologizing to the relatives of his victims. No witnesses from his family or the victims' family attended the execution. "I am sorry for what I did, and I take responsibility for what I did," said Dickson, the 13th prisoner to be executed this year in the nation's busiest capital...

(April 26, 2007)--A man whose criminal record dated back to a bicycle theft at age nine was put to death Thursday evening in Huntsville. Ryan Dickson, 30, was sentenced to die for the murder of 61-year-old Amarillo grocery clerk Carmelo Surace in 1994. Also killed the attempted beer theft was Surace's 60-year-old wife, Marie. Dickson was the 13th Texas inmate put to death this year in the nation's busiest capital punishment state. Dickson's lawyer, Ronald Spriggs, launched "a last-minute effort" court effort to block the execution, but the appeals failed. He contended Dickson might have been mentally retarded and ineligible...

Inmates executed by lethal injection may in some cases die by "chemical asphyxiation" while conscious but unable to move, according to a new analysis of California and North Carolina executions released Monday. The study appearing in the online edition of PLoS Medicine -- a San Francisco-based medical journal -- was authored by the same team of doctors and death penalty opponents who raised similar concerns about the procedure in the British medical journal The Lancet in 2005. That earlier study, which said sub-potent amounts of the anesthetic sodium pentothal were found in the corpses of executed inmates, helped to propel...

Inmates executed by lethal injection may in some cases die by "chemical asphyxiation" while conscious but unable to move, according to a new analysis of California and North Carolina executions released Monday. The study appearing in the online edition of PLoS Medicine -- a San Francisco-based medical journal -- was authored by the same team of doctors and death penalty opponents who raised similar concerns about the procedure in the British medical journal The Lancet in 2005. That earlier study, which said sub-potent amounts of the anesthetic sodium pentothal were found in the corpses of executed inmates, helped to propel...

California has been quietly building a larger death chamber at San Quentin Prison to meet a federal judge's criticism of its execution process. The new facility is about twice the size of the current one, The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. It includes three rooms for witnesses, more space for the official preparing the lethal injection and a cell where condemned prisoners can meet with spiritual advisers immediately before their executions

(April 11, 2007)—James Lee Clark, 38, was executed just after 6 p.m. Wednesday in Huntsville for the 1993 slaying of a 17-year-old high school honor student. Denton High School student Catherine Crews was raped and shot to death just days after Clark was released on parole after serving a burglary sentence. Also killed was a 16-year-old classmate of Crews, Jesus Garza. Clark was charged but never tried for Garza's death.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas ? Hours after setting a fire in his cell to protest his punishment, a Houston air conditioning contractor was executed Thursday night for the deaths of two Florida men gunned down in a dispute over missing drug money. Roy Lee Pippin, 51, had vowed to fight his execution and be uncooperative with corrections officers, but he walked to the death chamber and caused no additional disturbances. "I charge the people of the jury, the trial judge, the prosecutor that cheated to get this conviction, I charge each and every one of you with the murder of an innocent...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas ? A San Antonio man convicted of killing an Air Force officer during a carjacking 10 years ago was executed Wednesday evening. In a brief final statement, Vincent Gutierrez said, "I'd like to tell everybody I'm sorry the situation happened. My bad ? everybody is here because of what happened." It was unclear from his statement whether he was apologizing for the fatal shooting. He thanked a number of relatives and friends and expressed love to them. "Where's a stunt double when you need one?" he said, laughing.

(March 20, 2007)--A Dallas man with a history of robberies was executed Tuesday evening in Huntsville for murdering a convenience store owner during a 1997 holdup. The execution of Charles Anthony Nealy, whose 43rd birthday would have been Friday, was briefly delayed while the US Supreme Court considered his 11th hour appeal Tuesday evening. The high court declined to block the execution. Nealy was the ninth death row inmate put to death this year in the nation's busiest capital punishment state. Nealy had at least three earlier convictions for aggravated robbery when he was accused of murdering Jiten Bhakta. He...

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution of a man who had been scheduled to die Tuesday for killing a woman in 1991 and scattering her remains across two states. Inmate Kenneth Biros ? and the family of the victim, Tami Engstrom ? had waited for the decision more than six hours past his 10 a.m. scheduled execution time at Ohio's death house. The justices' one-sentence decision agreed with two lower courts that delayed the execution so he could continue arguing that Ohio's method of lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court...

A MAN who spent 25 years on Texas death row was executed by lethal injection today for a 1980 murder but only after prison officials had to carry him to the death chamber. Joseph Nichols, 45, was the second person in as many days and the eighth person put to death this year in Texas. The state leads the nation with 387 executions since 1982, when it reinstated the death penalty six years after the US Supreme Court lifted a capital punishment ban. He refused to walk to the death chamber but did not put up a fight, a prison...

(March 7, 2007)-- Joseph Nichols, 45, was executed just after 6 p.m. Tuesday in Huntsville for the shooting death of an elderly store clerk during a robbery more than a quarter century ago. The US Supreme Court refused late Wednesday to block the execution. Nichols and an accomplice, Willie Ray Williams, were both sentenced to death for the 1980 shooting death of Houston convenience store clerk Claude Shaffer, 70. Williams was executed for the crime in 1995. Appeals and protests from death penalty opponents focused on the fact that one bullet wound killed Shaffer and that Williams was convicted of...

(March 6, 2007)--The head of a notorious prison gang who allegedly approved more than a dozen killings in San Antonio during the 1990s heads was put to death just after 6 p.m. Tuesday in Huntsville. Mexican Mafia chief Robert Perez was executed for the Alamo City hits on Jose Travieso and James Rivas 13 years ago. He was the seventh prisoner Texas has put to death this year and the first of two in as many nights. Appeals were exhausted for Perez. A lawsuit on his behalf challenging the Texas execution procedures was dismissed in a Houston federal court last...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A paroled car and truck thief was executed Tuesday evening for a robbery and shooting that left two men dead a quarter-century ago outside Houston. When asked by the warden if he had anything to say, Donald Miller shook his head once. At 6:16 p.m., six minutes after the lethal dose began, he was pronounced dead.