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HUNTSVILLE -- Apologizing directly to his victim's relatives but calling his punishment unjust, Johnny Ray Conner was executed Wednesday evening for killing a Houston convenience store clerk during a failed robbery in 1998. Conner was the 400th person executed in Texas since executions resumed in December 1982. Conner, 32, asked for forgiveness repeatedly and expressed love for his family and the family of Kathyanna Nguyen, the woman he killed. He first asked the warden his name and for permission to speak longer than the usual two to three minutes and to have Nguyen's daughter pointed out to him through the...

Japan executes three murderers in 60s Friday, August 24, 2007 - TOKYO, AFP Japan on Thursday hanged three convicted murderers in their 60s as the country stepped up the pace of executions, officials and activists said. A justice ministry spokeswoman said the prison system hanged three criminals but declined to provide any further details, in line with standard procedure in Japan. Amnesty International and media reports said the three were convicted murderers aged between 60 and 69. Japan is the only major industrialized nation other than the United States to practice the death penalty. Despite enjoying one of the world's...

As a Texan living in Europe, I'm appalled by the state's execution Wednesday of Johnny Ray Conner. Capital punishment is wrong. In the 27 countries of the European Union and in Switzerland, where I live, capital punishment is rightly banned as cruel and inhumane, an offense against human dignity and an ineffective deterrent to violent crime. I applaud the European Union for urging Texas Gov. Rick Perry to spare Conner, who was the 400th person to be executed in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The European Union implored the governor to "exercise all powers vested...

HUNTSVILLE, United States (AFP) - A convicted murderer on Wednesday was put to death by lethal injection, in Texas' 400 execution since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Johnny Conner was pronounced dead at 1820 pm (2320 GMT), eight minutes after he was injected with the lethal concoction. "What is happening to me now is unjust and the system is broken," said the 32-year-old African American in his final statement. "At the same time, I bear witness there is no God but Allah and the Prophet Muhammed. Unto Allah, I belong, unto Allah I return. I love...

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to block tonight's scheduled execution of Texas death row inmate Johnny Ray Conner. Conner was condemned over the 1998 killing of a Houston convenience store clerk during a failed robbery.The shooting victim was 49-year-old Kathyanna Nguyen.Conner is slated to be the 400th convicted killer put to death in Texas since the state resumed executions in 1982. The 32-year-old inmate also would be the 21st condemned killer to have his execution carried out this year in Texas.The Austin-based Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty says Conner's pending execution represents, quote: "400 instances of failed...

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- Governor Fletcher's office has announced that the governor plans to sign a death warrant for a convicted murderer. Fletcher spokeswoman Jodi Whitaker says the governor is expected to sign the warrant for Ralph Baze Wednesday, setting an execution date for September 25th. Baze was condemned to death in 1993 for killing Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe. It would be the first execution in the state in eight years. There have been no executions in Kentucky since Fletcher took office in 2003. The state has executed two men since reinstating the death penalty...

In a courtroom filled with family members, Jose Carranza pleaded not guilty this morning to three counts of murder, attempted murder, robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery and weapons possession in the execution-style murders of three college students behind a Newark elementary school Saturday night. Carranza, 28, of Orange, wearing an orange jumpsuit, showed no emotion as he sat in court with his hands cuffed and communicated via a Spanish-speaking translator. Families of both the suspect and the victims filled the courtroom, though they said nothing. Mayor Cory Booker, Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow and Sheriff Armando Fontoura were also in...

Authorities hunting for suspects in the killings of three college students in a Newark schoolyard over the weekend taped a segment of the "America's Most Wanted" television show at the murder scene today in hopes of enlisting a national audience to help solve the killings.  As investigators continued to follow leads in the slayings, Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow visited the Mount Vernon School where the victims were shot execution-style on Saturday night to tape an interview for the nationally syndicated television show. "They have been very successful at times in breaking cases by the nature of their national audience,"...

NEWARK, N.J. -- Three of the young people had been ordered to line up against a wall on the weedy steps behind an elementary school and were shot to death from close range. A fourth was found alive by police slumped near a set of bleachers about 30 feet away, with gunshot and knife wounds to her head. All were from Newark; and all would soon either start or resume their lives away from the violent city, at a college hundreds of miles away. Ofemi Hightower been accepted Thursday to Delaware State University after two years of rejection letters. Terrance...

Darrell Grayson was put to death by lethal injection at Holman Correctional Facility this evening for the Christmas Eve 1980 murder of 86-year-old Montevallo widow Annie Laura Orr. The 46-year-old Grayson, pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m., had been adopted by activists as an example of the need for a state law mandating DNA testing for Death Row inmates. The Innocence Project, a New York-based non-profit that represents the condemned, had argued that DNA tests not available at the time of Grayson's trial might have proved him innocent. The U.S. Supreme Court in a two-sentence order this afternoon denied a request...

July 26, 2007 Fight to save teenage maid from beheading Jeremy Page in Delhi When Rizana Nafeek left her war-torn village in Sri Lanka two years ago, aged 17, she hoped to find a new life of peace and prosperity working as a maid in Saudi Arabia. Instead, she is on death row, facing possible decapitation in the next few months for allegedly strangling the baby son of her Saudi employers. Executions are commonplace in Saudi Arabia: there have been 109 so far this year, including four Sri Lankans who were beheaded for armed robbery. But Nafeek’s tender age, summary...

SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota (AP) -- A 25-year-old man was executed by lethal injection Wednesday for the torture and slaying of a teenager who was forced to drink hydrochloric acid during a robbery of his home. It was the state's first execution in 60 years Elijah Page gave up his appeals and asked to die for the 2000 murder of Chester Allan Poage, 19, who was also stabbed, kicked and bashed with large rocks in a torture session that lasted two to three hours. Page, of Athens, Texas, died at 10:11 p.m. from a lethal injection administered at the South...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — A 25-year-old man awaited a lethal injection Wednesday for the torture and slaying of a teenager who was forced to drink hydrochloric acid during a robbery of his home. It was to be the state's first execution in 60 years. Elijah Page, 25, gave up his appeals and asked to die for the 2000 murder of Chester Allan Poage, who was also stabbed, kicked and bashed with large rocks in a torture session that lasted two to three hours. Page was scheduled to be put to death at 10 p.m.

20 More Executions Under Way in Iran July 10, 2007 The New York Times Nazila Fathi TEHRAN -- The Iranian government confirmed Tuesday that a man was executed by stoning last week for committing adultery, and said that 20 more men would be executed in the coming days on morality violations. A judiciary spokesman, Alireza Jamshidi, told reporters on Tuesday that a death sentence by stoning had been carried out last week near the city of Takestan, west of Tehran, despite an order by the chief of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi, not to permit such executions. “The verdict was...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The mother of a US man whose 2006 execution took 86 minutes and involved sticking needles into him 19 times has sued the prison team which oversaw the execution for civil rights violations. ADVERTISEMENT On Monday Irma Clark filed suit in the Cincinnati, Ohio, district court, alleging her son Joseph Clark was exposed to "excessive suffering" violating the US constitution when he was put to death on May 2, 2006, at a state prison in Lucasville, Ohio, according to court documents. The suit claims that two prison administrators and 12 members of the execution team ignored the...

Toledo, Ohio (AP) -- The mother of a condemned inmate whose execution took an hour longer than is typical sued the head of Ohio's prisons Monday, asking the state to change the way it carries out death sentences. It took almost 90 minutes to execute Joseph Clark in May 2006; executions last 20 minutes on average. The lawsuit said the execution amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. Joining Irma Clark and her family at a news conference Monday was Michael Manning, whose brother David was killed by Clark in November 1984. "Nobody should have to die a horrible death,"...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Condemned prisoner Patrick Knight was executed Tuesday evening for the deaths of an Amarillo-area couple without delivering on a promise to tell a joke in his final statement. Patrick Knight has been soliciting jokes in the mail and on a Web site, sometimes receiving as many as 20 a day, saying his humor was intended to raise the spirits of other inmates. He said he received as many as 1,300 proposals. But when the moment came, Knight thanked God for his friends and asked for help for innocent men on death row. He named several he said...

ST. LOUIS To the very end, convicted killer Larry Griffin shouted his innocence to the world through court filings, in pleas to the governor and to nearly any reporter willing to listen. None of it helped. Griffin, strapped to a white gurney, was executed by injection. Now, 12 years later, St. Louis' chief prosecutor will soon release a report offering an opinion on whether Missouri put an innocent man to death. The report, two years in the making, has no legal weight but could have a powerful effect on the nation's death penalty debate. Nearly 1,100 people have been executed...

June 19, 1953 : Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War. Julius was arrested in July 1950, and Ethel in August of that same year, on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. Specifically, they were accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence, but after a...

LANDI KOTAL (Khyber Agency), June 4: A woman and three men were publicly executed in Bara on Monday after a jirga found them ‘guilty of adultery’. Haji Jan Gul, a member of Sipah Eslahee Committee, told Dawn that acting on a tip, members of his committee had caught the four in a house in Alamgudar village. He said the four had been interrogated by the jirga before the verdict for their execution was issued. He said one of the men, Said Ras of Mardan, had told the jirga that he got the woman, who was his relative, into the business...