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Utah seeks gunmen for 2 scheduled executions White supremacist, serial killer chose firing squad; appeal pending05/23/2003 Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY – The only state that dispatches condemned inmates by firing squad is assembling gunmen for back-to-back executions next month. The nation's last execution by firing squad was in 1996. Exercising their right under Utah law, serial killer Roberto Arguelles and Troy Michael Kell, a white supremacist who stabbed a fellow inmate to death, have chosen the firing squad over lethal injection and are set to die at 12:01 a.m. on June 27 and 28, respectively. However, Mr. Kell filed...

Ba'ath Party teacher accuses 'war crimes' British colonel of staging mock execution By Michael Smith in Rumailah (Filed: 23/05/2003) The Ba'ath Party representative in the first town occupied by the Royal Irish Regiment is thought to be the source for four of the five allegations of "war crimes" made against Col Tim Collins. Ayoub Younis Nasser, the former headmaster of the al-Nukhaila school in Rumailah, 30 miles west of Basra, took his unsubstantiated claims further yesterday, claiming that Col Collins also subjected him and his son to a mock execution. Mr Nasser, who is now an ordinary teacher, alleged that...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP)--The only state that dispatches condemned inmates by firing squad is assembling gunmen for back-to-back executions next month. The nation's last execution by firing squad was in 1996. Exercising their right under Utah law, a serial killer Roberto Arguelles and Troy Michael Kell, a white supremacist who stabbed a fellow inmate to death, have chosen the firing squad over lethal injection and are set to die at 12:01 a.m. on June 27 and 28, respectively. However, Kell filed an appeal last week that will probably halt his execution. Of the 850 inmates put to death in the...

Death sentence upheld for 'Railroad Killer' BY MARK BABINECK Associated Press Writer HOUSTON - The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Wednesday put confessed rail-riding serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz one step closer to getting his wish that he be executed as soon as possible. The state's highest criminal court, in a 7-2 decision, affirmed the Mexican drifter's May 2000 conviction and death sentence for the Dec. 17, 1998, rape-slaying of Dr. Claudia Benton, a Houston-area medical researcher. State District Judge William Harmon, who presided over the trial, said Wednesday Maturino Resendiz's appeals will continue unless he again asks to stop...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Reuters) - Florida on Friday executed a man who murdered a Tampa family and cut an unborn baby from the dying mother's womb, killings he said he did not remember because someone spiked his beer with cocaine. Newton Carlton Slawson, 48, was executed by chemical injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford. He was pronounced dead at 7:10 a.m., said Alia Faraj, spokeswoman for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Originally scheduled for Thursday, the execution was postponed so a psychiatrist could test Slawson's sanity. Gov. Bush lifted the stay shortly before 1:30 a.m. Friday. On April 11, 1989,...

Man executed in killing of teen in home near SMU Attacker fatally stabbed boy on victim's 16th birthday05/16/2003 Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas – Convicted killer Bruce Charles Jacobs was executed Thursday evening for fatally hacking a Dallas youth with a butcher knife on the victim's 16th birthday almost 17 years ago. Mr. Jacobs recited by memory as his last statement the 23rd Psalm that begins "The Lord is my shepherd" and ends with "I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Raising his head off the gurney and turning to four friends watching from an adjacent room, Mr....

Thu May 15,12:27 PM ET An undated still image taken from video footage obtained by Reuters Television May 15, 2003, purportedly showing an unidentified prisoner waiting to be exectued by unidentified officials during the rule of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), at an undisclosed location. To the left is the body of another executed prisoner. The footage showed explosives and wires being attached to three prisoners, before being detonated as a means of execution. BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE FIFTH OF SEVEN IMAGES REUTERS/Reuters Television

Former jail escapee convicted of murder set to die 05/06/2003 Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Convicted killer Roger Dale Vaughn blamed his own stupidity for winding up on death row. Prosecutors looked at Vaughn's criminal past, his escape from the Lubbock County Jail and the carnage he left behind at the home of a 66-year-old strangled woman in Vernon and convinced a jury that's where he belonged. "He's just a mean fellow," says Dan Mike Bird, the Wilbarger County district attorney who prosecuted Vaughn for the rape-slaying of Dora Wilkins more than 11 years ago. AP Roger Dale Vaughn The...

MEDELLIN, Colombia - Colombia's president asked the nation to back him in fighting terrorism after a state governor, a former defense minister and eight others held hostage by leftist guerrillas were killed in a military rescue attempt. In an emotional televised address late Monday, President Alvaro Uribe said the hostages were executed by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels as troops approached the rebel camp. An alleged rebel communique blamed the government for the killings. "In this moment of pain, Colombia cannot surrender," said Uribe, who was elected promising to crackdown on the guerrillas. "Now, we have to fortify our...

Isaacs' lawyer says prayer prejudiced his trial The Associated Press A lawyer for the nation's longest-serving death row inmate argued Monday that a minister's opening prayer that "God's will should be done" prejudiced the jury against him in a retrial. Attorney Jack Martin asked Georgia's Supreme Court to stay Tuesday's execution of Carl Isaacs because the court reporter never recorded the prayer, making it impossible for the defense to challenge it effectively. "This is an important enough issue that the court should stop, take a breath and look at it further," Martin told The Associated Press. Barring a last-minute stay,...

THE eight members of the Iraqi execution squad were laughing and cursing as they lined up their 50 prisoners in front of the large, sandy pit. Their victims were made to squat down with their hands tied behind their backs. Then, without ceremony, they were each dispatched with a burst of machinegun-fire, before their bodies were rolled into the mass grave. The purges of Shia Muslims by Saddam Hussein’s security forces in the spring of 1991 rate as one of the bloodiest episodes of his brutal rule. But the crimes were supposed to remain undiscovered and had the killers not...

Saddam killed his top commander as Marines stormed Baghdad SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COMSunday, May 4, 2003 LONDON — Iraqi President Saddam Hussein killed his leading military commander on charges of treason as U.S. forces captured Baghdad. The London-based A-Sharq Al Awsat daily said Saddam and his younger son, Qusay, executed Gen. Seif Eddin Al Rawi on April 8. The newspaper said Al Rawi, commander of the elite Republican Guards, was accused of treason and shot in the head and back. Al Rawi was summoned by Saddam and executed on the day U.S. marines captured the Iraqi capital. The newspaper...

McVeigh's guilt deemed certain Letter suggesting false testimony didn't lessen his case, Ashcroft says05/03/2003 Associated Press AUSTIN – There is no doubt about the guilt of executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday, despite the disclosure of a letter sent to the Justice Department two weeks before the execution that suggested a prosecution witness gave false testimony. Prosecutors didn't disclose the false testimony allegations to Mr. McVeigh's lawyers before the execution and later tried to recover all copies of the letter in exchange for a lawsuit settlement. "The United States of America went way...

BU GHRAIB, Iraq, April 27 — They were killed perhaps three weeks ago, blindfolded, their hands bound behind their backs, then shot by a government that was itself about to die. Even as American troops neared the huge prison here, Iraq continued to execute suspected spies.In the last two days, relatives looking for loved ones have unearthed 14 bodies, not inside a cemetery, but in a pit just outside Block 5, which was reserved for foreigners. Neighbors said they had found 10 more corpses on the prison grounds — like the others, all in civilian clothes and apparently killed...

<p>Fidel Castro (search) singled out America's top diplomat in Cuba as he blamed a supposed conspiracy between the U.S. government and exiles in Miami for his recent dissident crackdown and the firing-squad executions of three hijackers.</p> <p>Pope John Paul II has appealed to Castro to show clemency toward the dissidents, who were sentenced to long prison terms, the Vatican (search) said Saturday.</p>

Iraqis Discover Secret Dissident Files By NIKO PRICE .c The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The file drawers fill room after room, papers spilling out. Inside, recorded with chilling bureaucratic detail, are the informants' reports, court records, confessions and execution orders for thousands of Iraqi dissidents. The government files, shown Thursday to The Associated Press, could be the basis for Iraqis to begin to come to terms with their past - or could be the catalyst for a new wave of bloodletting. ``Saddam Hussein kept these files because he thought he would rule forever,'' said a dissident who was...

Relatives Dig Up Missing Iraq Dissidents By NIKO PRICE .c The Associated Press ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (AP) - For years there were only numbers - mound after mound in the parched dust marked by numbered metal stakes. Now this back corner of a public cemetery is filled with the wails of people who have connected those numbers to the names of loved ones who disappeared during Saddam Hussein's rule. ``They used to tell people who asked that this cemetery was for poor people who died nameless in the streets,'' said gravedigger Majid Moussa. ``But we knew it was for political...

Tied to 12 deaths, Dallas 'thrill killer' executed 04/23/2003 Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas – A convicted killer believed responsible for at least a dozen slayings over a five-month period while on parole was executed Tuesday for one of five murders authorities said he committed on a single bloody night in Dallas eight years ago. Juan Rodriguez Chavez, 34, who had earned the nickname "The Thrill Killer" for the random attacks was smiling and grinning broadly as his mother, a brother and a sister came into the death chamber to watch him die. FILE / DMN Juan Rodriguez Chavez "To the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The bodies of two Iraqis who had been missing for about a month were unearthed Tuesday with their hands tied behind their backs from graves on the grounds of the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison. Friends and relatives of the missing Iraqis were also looking for six others who were taken from a mosque about a month ago by Saddam's Fedayeen, a paramilitary group loyal to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). "We found one of our friends and we are trying to find the others. People told us that they were killed here," said Ali Khaled Shefeq,...

Prolific Dallas killer faces execution today 'A twisted side to him'04/22/2003 By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News One of Dallas' most prolific killers – whom authorities said derived a sadistic thrill from the more than dozen slayings attributed to him – is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday. Juan Rodriguez Chavez was a high school dropout on parole for a 1986 murder conviction when he went on a killing spree across western Dallas in 1995. The rampage peaked July 2 of that year with the shooting deaths of five people. "It struck me at the time as some...