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Iran Hangs Nine in Teheran Execution October 18, 2007 AFP Khaleej Times Online TEHERAN -- Iran hanged nine people convicted of murder, including a woman, at Evin prison in Teheran in the latest of a growing number of executions in the Islamic republic, a newspaper reported on Thursday. The woman, identified only as Fakhteh C., and the eight others were hanged on Wednesday after being found guilty of various murders, the Teheran Emrouz newspaper reported. It said that some raped their victims before killing them. Separately, two Kurdish militants who belonged to an outlawed party seeking Kurdish autonomy in Iran...

Huntsville, Texas (AP) -- The nation's busiest death penalty state executed another inmate Tuesday night, hours after the Supreme Court said it would review whether the lethal injection method most states use is cruel and unusual. Michael Richard, 49, was put to death for the 1986 shooting of Marguerite Lucille Dixon, a 53-year-old nurse and mother of seven. Richard had been released from his second prison term eight weeks before Dixon was raped and killed inside her home. Asked if he'd like to make a final statement, Richard said, "I'd like my family to take care of each other. I...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections in a case that could affect the way inmates are executed around the country. The high court will hear a challenge from two inmates on death row in Kentucky — Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. — who sued Kentucky in 2004, claiming lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Baze has been scheduled for execution Tuesday night, but the Kentucky Supreme Court halted the proceedings earlier this month. The U.S. Supreme Court has previously made it easier for death row inmates to...

Thursday December 6 10:40 PM ET Iraqi National Executed in Okla. By ROCHELLE HINES, Associated Press Writer McALESTER, Okla. (AP) - An Iraqi national who stabbed his wife and her uncle to death in 1992 was executed Thursday. Sahib Al-Mosawi, 53, was sentenced to death in 1994. He did not request a clemency hearing and had no appeals pending. He was executed by injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. He met his wife and her family at a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia after they left Iraq in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War (news - web sites). Their marriage ...

Tennessee's electric chair is to be used to execute a prisoner despite warnings from the chair's designer the voltage is too low. Daryl Keith Holton, 45, is scheduled to die at 1 a.m. Wednesday in Nashville for the 1997 killings of his three young sons and his ex-wife's 4-year-old daughter, USA Today reported Tuesday. It would be Tennesse's first execution by electric chair in 47 years. Holton chose the chair rather than lethal injection, as was his right under state law, despite warnings the chair's voltage is too low from modifications made in the 1990s, the newspaper said. Fred Leuchter,...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A drifter set to die this week for killing an Amarillo woman is the first of five convicted killers scheduled for lethal injection this month in the nation's busiest capital punishment state. Tony Roach, 30, from Greenville, S.C., faces execution Wednesday for strangling 37-year-old Ronnie Dawn Hewitt after breaking in her apartment nine years ago. His punishment would bring to 24 the number of executions in Texas this year, equaling the total for all of last year. Four men were executed last month, including two last week. A third set to die last week, Kenneth Foster, received...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Gov. Rick Perry, in a rare and uncharacteristic move Thursday, spared the life of condemned prisoner Kenneth Foster, hours before he was to be executed for his role in a San Antonio robbery-shooting. The halt to Thursday's execution marked only the second time since Texas resumed carrying out executions in 1982 that the parole board voted to stop an execution this close to punishment time. And in that case, in 2004, Perry rejected the board's recommendation and the prisoner was executed. But this time, Perry agreed with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles' equally unusual recommendation...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Kenneth Foster has never killed anyone. But the 30-year-old Texan still faces execution this week, despite protests at home and abroad, for his complicity in a drug-fueled murder. Foster was arrested in August 1996 with three other young black men, all of whom were said to be high on marijuana, following the deadly shooting of Michael LaHood, 25, in the southern Texan city of San Antonio. Foster was driving the car being used by his three passengers, including Mauriceo Brown, to rob passers-by. Brown got into an altercation with LaHood, who was white, when he started to...

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...