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Johnson Executed For Videotaped Robbery-Slaying Inmate's Final Words: 'Tell Mama I Love Her' Posted: 6:54 p.m. CDT June 11, 2003 Updated: 7:04 p.m. CDT June 11, 2003 HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- A twice-paroled burglar was executed Wednesday evening for gunning down the night manager of a suburban San Antonio convenience store almost 10 years ago in a $23 robbery. "Tell Mama I love her," Kia Levoy Johnson, 38, said when asked by a prison warden if he had a final statement. "Tell the kids I love them too. See y'all," he said, directing his comments to his brother, watching through...

Inmate facing death for robbery-slaying 06/11/2003 Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas - For an agonizing 45 minutes, a surveillance videotape shows William Rains trying to climb out from behind a counter after he had been shot and robbed at the suburban San Antonio convenience store where he was the night manager. "It's like in the movies where you see the shaking hand come up and the shaking hand go down when somebody is trying to lift themselves up," Bexar County Assistant District Attorney Michael Cohen recalled this week. "You'd see the hand shake, then fall. It was real surreal. "Unfortunately, this...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Guantanamo officials are ready to provide a courtroom, a prison and an execution chamber if the order comes to try terror suspects at the base in Cuba, the mission commander said. Although no new directive has been given and no plans have been approved, a handful of experts are looking at what it will take to try, imprison and, if need be, execute detainees accused of links to Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s fallen Taliban regime or to the al-Qaida terror network. "We have a number of plans that we work for short-term and long-term...

On June 19, 1953, as the Yankees were playing the Chicago White Sox in Yankee Stadium, not too many miles "up the river", 2,000 volts of electricity was surging through the bodies of liberal left-wing traitors, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The question on this 50th anniversary of the Rosenbergs punishment is "Who did more damage to US national security - Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, or Bill and Hillary Clinton? The stench of ammonia saturated the air. Ammonia and death. Before the three jolts of electricity killed him, Julius had urinated involuntarily and now the guard was mopping the floor and...

STRING THEM UP Fri Jun 6, 7:01 PM ET By William F. Buckley Jr. Ahmed Jubarah said that he did not consider himself a murderer; he was simply a man who wanted peace and freedom. That's all. He traveled extensively in his young life, including, at age 20, a voyage to Colombia, where there have been a lot of people over a lot of decades who have sought peace and freedom at gunpoint. He went then to Paterson, N.J., and on to Chicago. He later returned to the West Bank, his native land, and joined Al-Fatah. He put an old...

Convicted terrorists should be executed William F. Buckley (archive) June 7, 2003 Ahmed Jubarah said that he did not consider himself a murderer, he was simply a man who wanted peace and freedom. That's all. He traveled extensively in his young life, including, at age 20, a voyage to Colombia, where there have been a lot of people over a lot of decades who have sought peace and freedom at gunpoint. He went then to Paterson, New Jersey, and on to Chicago. He later he returned to the West Bank, his native land, and joined Al-Fatah. He put an old...

When he got started in his unusual line of work back in 1998, Muhammad Saad al-Beshi suffered from "stage fright" because so many people were watching him. But the nervousness soon left him, just like his victim's head. "The criminal was tied and blindfolded. With one stroke of the sword I severed his head. It rolled meters away," said al-Beshi, Saudi Arabia's top executioner, according to a story in the Saudi daily Arab News. Muhammad Saad al-Beshi (Photo courtesy of Arab News) And how does al-Beshi feel about killing people for a living? In the interview, reported also by the...

Dallas couple's killer gets stay of execution 05/30/2003 Associated Press HOUSTON – The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday granted a stay of execution based on a mental retardation claim by a death row inmate who was convicted of fatally stabbing a Dallas civil rights lawyer and his wife in 1986. Kenneth Dwayne Thomas, 42, was set for lethal injection June 18 for the burglary and killing of Fred Finch and his wife, Mildred. The appeals court Thursday sent Mr. Thomas' case back to a Dallas trial court, where the inmate's mental retardation claims are to be considered. During...

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...