Free Republic

He has received death threats regularly and was once asked by his pastor to change churches. For years he and his wife wouldn’t leave the house without bodyguards at their side. The pressure got to be so bad that the couple eventually stopped going out at all, unless it was absolutely necessary. But if you ask Judge George Greer about the experience, he’d tell you it was all in a day’s work. The 16-year veteran of the bench was the adjudicator tasked with hearing the highly publicized case of Terri Schiavo, the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman whose husband applied in 1998...

There are three ways to react to an organizational crisis. One way is to turn your head to ignore the situation and hope that it will fix itself (best of luck!). Another way is to run around in a panic-induced cost-cutting frenzy that could seriously impair the organization’s long-term growth potential and future state. The third and, of course, smartest method is to recognize the impending threat to both your top and bottom line, and quickly adapt the organization’s strategic outlook and business model to the new environmental conditions. So, the question to answer is this: “what are the decision...

TOPEKA, Kan. — A federal judge in Kansas has issued a stay in what would be the Army’s first execution since 1961. U.S. District Judge Richard Rogers issued the order Nov. 26 in the case of Ronald A. Gray, who was scheduled to die Dec. 10 for murders and rapes in the 1980s. Rogers has not set a date to hear Gray’s case. Attorneys for the Justice Department filed documents Tuesday asking Rogers to reconsider his stay order, saying Gray has had ample time to file an appeal. However, Gray’s attorney, Thomas Bath, had argued that he couldn’t appeal until...

Marco Allen Chapman, who killed two children by slitting their throats after raping and stabbing their mother, was put to death Friday as he requested when an executioner pumped drugs into his veins to shut down his lungs and heart. Chapman, 37, became the third person executed in Kentucky since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a national moratorium on the death penalty. With his last words, Chapman apologized to Carolyn Marksberry for the attack on her and her children — Courtney Sharon, 10, Chelbi Sharon, 7, and Cody Sharon, 6 — but he also said the murders were...

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — A former Army cook convicted of multiple rapes and murders is set to die next month in what would be the U.S. military's first execution in nearly 50 years. The military said Thursday that former North Carolina soldier Ronald A. Gray is to be executed Dec. 10 at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind. Gray was arrested in connection with four slayings and eight rapes in the Fayetteville, N.C., area between April 1986 and January 1987, while he was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was convicted of murdering two women.

The Indonesian Attorney-General's Office has confirmed that the three Bali bombers have been executed by firing squad for their involvement in the 2002 bombings which killed more than 202 people, including 88 Australians. A spokesman for the Attorney-General, Jasman Pandjaitan, said all three men have been declared dead. Earlier news emerged from inside the Bali bombers' prison on Nusakambangan Island in Central Java that the three men - Imam Samudra, 38, Amrozi, 47, and Mukhlas, 48 - were killed. All three were shot at the same time by three separate firing squads about 12:15am (local time), before a medical team...

OAKLAND — The lead detective assigned to investigate journalist Chauncey Bailey's killing ignored evidence linking Yusuf Bey IV, former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, to a role in the killing and interfered in two other unrelated felony cases involving Bey IV, according to an investigation by the Chauncey Bailey Project. The Bailey Project's reporting has led to a police internal affairs investigation of that detective, Sgt. Derwin Longmire, and whether his relationship with Bey IV may have compromised the case. Law enforcement officials said the investigation of the Bailey killing is in crisis. If Longmire is charged with administrative...

LUCASVILLE, Ohio — A death row inmate convicted of murdering two women 22 years ago was set to death Tuesday without any family members present. ~snip~ The 5-foot-7, 267-pound Cooey had tried to avoid execution by arguing that his obesity would prevent humane lethal injection because viable veins in his arms are hard to find. ~snip~Cooey dined Monday evening on the special meal he ordered, including T-bone steak with A-1 sauce, onion rings, french fries, four eggs over easy, toast with butter, hash browns, a pint of rocky road ice cream, a Mountain Dew soft drink and bear claw pastries.

LUCASVILLE, Ohio -- Ohio has executed a 5-foot-7, 267-pound double murderer who argued he was too fat to die humanely by lethal injection. Richard Cooey died at 10:28 a.m. Tuesday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. There were no immediate reports of problems finding suitable veins to deliver the deadly chemicals. His attorneys had argued that his weight problem could make it difficult for prison staff to access a vein. A prisons spokeswoman said earlier that Cooey received a pre-execution exam and was cleared. Cooey was the first inmate executed in Ohio in more than a year, and...

Cincinnati, OH (AHN) - The Ohio Supreme Court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled against staying the execution of an inmate because he is obese. The two courts upheld an earlier ruling of the U.S. The double murder convict argued that lethal injection might not be properly administered to him and might be painful and slow because his physical condition will make it difficult to find a vein where the lethal drug will be injected.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - A double murderer scheduled to be executed next month in Ohio said Tuesday he has not deliberately gained weight to rule out his death by lethal injection. Instead, Richard Cooey said in a death row interview that his execution cannot be carried out humanely under current state procedures because his veins are hard to reach. "Vein access was an issue even when I was back in the service," Cooey, 41, said in an hour-long interview with the Associated Press at the Ohio State Penitentiary. Cooey, 5-foot, 7 inches tall and 267 pounds, said he has gained perhaps...

ACKSON — Georgia’s longest-serving death row inmate was executed Tuesday in the slaying of his wife 34 years ago. Jack Alderman was pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson. The 57-year-old Alderman was sentenced to die by lethal injection in the 1974 slaying of his wife, Barbara. He and an accomplice beat her with a crescent wrench and choked her at their Chatham County home before dumping her body in a creek. Prosecutors allege he wanted to collect $20,000 in life insurance money. Alderman has been on death row for 33 years.

from some good friends: GET READY, GET READY, GET READY!! An Urgent Letter of Warning, Preparation and Promises Dear Friends and Family, (This letter recently came to us from people we trust.. Please read prayerfully and be warned. Be ready! For in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh. Matt 24:44 The only thing the NWO people don't know is that the 4 angels of Rev 7 are still holding back the winds...till God's servants are sealed...Nonetheless, it behooves us to be ready. Europe is talking about the imminent US economic collapse which will spread...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three U.S. soldiers killed four handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots on the bank of a Baghdad canal last year, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. Sergeant First Class Joseph P. Mayo, the platoon sergeant, and Sergeant Michael P. Leahy Jr., Company D's senior medic and an acting squad leader, made sworn statements in January to Army investigators in Schweinfurt, Germany probing the incident, the newspaper reported on its website. The men each described killing one of the Iraqi detainees, as directed by First Sergeant John E. Hatley, according to the statements. Hatley shot...

Attorneys for [Jeffery] Wood were in the federal courts this week seeking permission to hire mental health experts to pursue their arguments that Wood is incompetent to be executed tonight. Texas courts have turned down Wood’s appeals. Wood was convicted in the January 1996 slaying of Kriss Keeran, 31, at a Texaco in Kerrville. ...[Daniel] Reneau, Wood’s roommate, was executed in 2002 for shooting Keeran.

Condemned inmate Michael Rodriguez, convicted of taking part in killing a Dallas-area police officer nearly eight years ago while a member of the infamous "Texas 7" gang of escaped fugitives, was executed Thursday. He was the eighth convicted killer executed this year in the nation's busiest capital punishment state and the fourth this month. Another is set for next week.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- A twice-convicted killer with a history of violence that continued even after he was sent to death row was executed Tuesday for gunning down two video store workers during a robbery 14 years ago in Dallas. "...See y'all when you get there," Leon David Dorsey IV said in his final statement. "Do what you're going to do." Dorsey was the seventh prisoner executed this year in the nation's most active death penalty state and the first of two inmates scheduled to die this week. Two more are to die next week.

(Dallas, TX) -- A Dallas killer, one of the most dangerous men on Death Row, will be executed tonight. Leon Dorsey freely admits that he murdered two Blockbuster employees in Dallas during a high-profile 1994 robbery. He shows no remorse over the brutal killings and refuses to apologize. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice keeps Dorsey on its highest lockdown level because of a history of violence and threats. In his eight years on Death Row, Dorsey has amassed nearly 100 infractions including an attack where he stabbed a guard 14 times with a hand-made shank. The guard was saved...

HUNTSVILLE — An illegal immigrant from Honduras who claimed his treaty rights were violated when he was arrested for a robbery-murder near Dallas was executed Thursday evening. "God forgive them, receive my spirit," Heliberto Chi said in English. In Spanish, he told a friend watching through a window that he loved him and appreciated his hard work. He appeared to be whispering a prayer in Spanish with a tear at the corner of his right eye as the lethal drugs began to take effect. One of Chi's cousins, who was among the witnesses, sobbed uncontrollably. Two sons of his victims...

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran's judiciary has decided to scrap the punishment of stoning convicts to death in draft legislation submitted to parliament for approval, the local press reported on Wednesday. Judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi was also quoted as saying that stoning sentences against several convicts had been suspended, with four commuted to either lashes of the whip or jail terms. "In the latest version of the Islamic penal codes bill, which has undergone several modifications, such punishments are not mentioned," Jamshidi said, the reformist Etemad newspaper reported, referring to both stoning and amputation.