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JACKSON, Ga. (AP) - A Georgia man convicted of murdering 1 of the followers of his white supremacist group insisted that he was not to blame for the killing shortly before he was put to death Wednesday evening.

...Really, what do you do with a captured pirate? Make him walk the plank? Is that even legal? Traditionally, English Admiralty law allowed for the summary execution of a captured pirate. Indeed, in medieval times, he could be hanged, drawn and quartered...Since last year, however, the Foreign Office has advised the Royal Navy not to detain pirates of some nationalities because, facing the death penalty at home, they could then claim asylum in Britain. The resurgence of piracy is hardly surprising when you consider the disparity between the average income of a Somali with a boat, and the vast amounts...

WALLA WALLA, Wash. (AP) -- Four people designated to administer lethal injections to death-row inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary have resigned, apparently worried that their identities could become public in court. The Seattle Times reported Thursday that the four resigned Tuesday for fear that their names would become known as a result of litigation on whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment..... Full article: HERE

A Georgia man expressed remorse for killing his "good friend" shortly before he was executed Tuesday for the murder of a neighbor he stabbed to death after the 27-year-old woman spurned his sexual advances. Robert Newland, 65, was put to death by lethal injection at the state prison at Jackson and was pronounced dead at 7:35 p.m. Newland was the first person executed in Georgia this year. "I'm sorry this happened. I wish I could go back to that day," he said. "I have no grudges against anybody. I still don't remember what happened, but what happened happened." A few...

On October 11, 1997, after a night filled with marijuana, cocaine, and drinking, Luis Salazar claims he thought he was back home in his own house, and that the person he stabbed to death was an intruder. Instead, Salazar was in the home of Martha Sanchez, 28, and her three children, one of whom Salazar also stabbed in the chest after killing their mother. Evidence shows that Salazar knew what he was doing: Evidence, however, showed the telephone wires at the home next door to where Salazar previously lived had been cut and Sanchez’s injuries indicated Salazar had tried to...

JACKSON, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia man was executed Tuesday for stabbing a neighbor to death who had spurned his sexual advances. Robert Newland, 65, was put to death by lethal injection at the state prison at Jackson and was pronounced dead at 7:35 p.m. by authorities. He was the first person executed in Georgia this year. Newland was convicted in 1987 and sentenced to death for the slaying of Carol Sanders Beatty, a 27-year-old former state and national amateur diving champion. Authorities say Newland went to the woman's duplex on St. Simons Island in May 1986 after a drinking...

After decades of moral arguments reaching biblical proportions, after long, twisted journeys to the nation's highest court and back, the death penalty may be abandoned by several states for a reason having nothing to do with right or wrong: Money. Turns out, it is cheaper to imprison killers for life than to execute them, according to a series of recent surveys.

WEST PALM BEACH — A federal jury this afternoon convicted two men in the 2006 murders of a family of four along Florida's Turnpike. The verdicts mean either life in prison or death for Ricardo Sanchez and Daniel Troya, both 25. The 12-member jury after four days of deliberations also convicted Danny Varela, 28, and Liana Lee Lopez, 20, on charges related to the drug ring the four ran from a luxury Briar Bay home in 2006. Jose Luis Escobedo worked as a drug connection for the group. He, his wife Yessica and their 3 and 4-year-old sons Luis Damian...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A man blamed for numerous killings and rapes has been executed in Texas for the murder of a woman who was raped, beaten and left to die on a Houston street. Fifty-one-year-old Johnny Ray Johnson was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. Thursday. A Harris County jury sent Johnson to death row for the 1995 murder of 41-year-old Leah Joette Smith. According to court documents, her murder was one of at least five rape-slayings in Houston and Austin that were linked to the former truck and taxi driver. He also was linked at least eight other rapes...

ARLINGTON – Police Detective Tommy Le Noir remembers the alarm that gripped this city in 1996 after two young women were found strangled in the bathtubs of their east Arlington apartment complex. "There was a lot of fear in the community and in the Police Department," Le Noir said. "The fear is that you don't want this to happen again. At that time there was some incredible panic in those apartment complexes. People moved out in masses. It was just an incredible time." Tuesday night, almost 13 years after the crimes, the state plans to execute 35-year-old Dale Devon Scheanette...

A man convicted of murdering three people during a night of robberies more than 13 years ago in Fort Worth was put to death Wednesday evening in the nation's first execution of the year. In a brief, final statement, Curtis Moore, 40, thanked a woman who administers to the spiritual needs of death row inmates. "I want to thank you for all the beautiful years of friendship and ministry," Moore told Irene Wilcox as she watched through a window a few feet (meters) from him. Moore never acknowledged a man who survived his attacks or five relatives of the three...

A 20-year-old Ghanaian has been sentenced to death in Singapore for trafficking 2.6 kilograms (5.73 pounds) of cannabis, the Straits Times reported Saturday. The High Court convicted and sentenced Chijioke Stephen Obioha on Tuesday after a 21-day trial held last year, it said. Under Singapore's tough anti-drug laws, the death penalty is mandatory for anyone caught trafficking more than 15 grams of heroin, 30 grams of cocaine or 500 grams of cannabis. The death penalty is carried out by hanging. Narcotics officers arrested Obioha in April 2007 following a surveillance operation. He had come to Singapore in 2005 to try...

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.