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SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah is set to execute a convicted killer by firing squad after a judge agreed Friday to the inmate's request for the method, renewing a debate over what critics see as an antiquated, Old West-style of justice. Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, was given the choice of being killed by lethal injection or shot by a five-man team of executioners firing from a set of matched rifles, a rarely used relic that harkens back to Utah's territorial history. "I would like the firing squad, please," Gardner told State court Judge Robin Reese Friday morning, after Reese told...

North Korea has executed a ruling party official blamed for a botched currency reform, in a desperate attempt to quell public unrest... The execution by firing squad in Pyongyang last week of Pak Nam-ki, Labour Party chief for planned economy, was for the crime of "a son of a bourgeois conspiring to infiltrate the ranks of revolutionaries to destroy the national economy..." The unrest, triggered by sharp price increases in the marketplace amid confusion caused by the late November currency revaluation, forced the North to take some steps to roll back its effect. Analysts said that showed the North was...

Kristie Reed was on the basement floor, her throat and wrists slashed. Her older sister, Stacie, was upstairs, dead from a stab wound to the heart. When police reached Kristie, who was then 14 years old, an officer leaned in and asked who had done this to her. Kristie mouthed two words: "Paul Powell." On Thursday night, more than 11 years later, Paul Warner Powell, 31, was executed in Virginia's electric chair. He was declared dead at 9:09 p.m. The Jan. 29, 1999, murder of one sister and the rape and near-slaying of the other in Manassas were among the...

/begin my excerpts Sources: N. Korea' Park Nam-ki Shot by Firing Squad...Blamed for Currency Reform Fiasco Accused of deliberate destruction of economy, but few believe it Similar to Seo Kwan-hi execution during 'March of Suffering'(great famine) in 90's (Seoul-Yonhap News) Choi Sun-young & Chang Yong-hoon: Park Nam-ki, the N. Korea's former Director of the Planning and Financial Department of the Central Committee, was shot by firing squad in Pyongyang last week, blamed for the failed currency reform, according to sources. On Mar. 18, sources told Yonhap News, "N. Korean authorities executed the former director Park last week at the firing...

RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) - Governor Bob McDonnell issued the following statement today on the scheduled execution of Paul Warner Powell. "On January 15, 2003, Paul Warner Powell was convicted in Prince William County Circuit Court of the brutal capital murder and attempted rape of sixteen year old Stacie Lynn Reed. Powell was previously convicted of the rape and attempted murder of Stacie's fourteen year-old sister. "On May 8, 2003, the trial court, in accordance with the jury's verdict and recommendation, sentenced Powell to death. Powell admitted to the murder and attempted rape, and thus Powell's guilt is not at issue....

Texas Thursday executed Joshua Maxwell for the robbery and murder of Bexar County, Texas, Sheriff's Sgt. Rudolfo Lopes. Maxwell and his girlfriend at the time, Tessie McFarland, killed Lopes and an Indiana man, Robby Bott, during a 2000 crime spree that began in Indiana and ended following a shootout with police in San Francisco, the San Antonio News-Express said. McFarland, 30, is serving a life sentence. Before he was put to death in Huntsville, Texas, Thursday, Maxwell apologized to his victims and their families. "I hurt a lot of people with the decisions I made," he said. "I can't be...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Associated Press) -- The state of Texas has executed a Dallas-area man convicted of fatally shooting a Brazilian engineer. Thirty-two-year-old Michael Sigala received a lethal injection Tuesday night for the August 2000 fatal shooting of 28-year-old Kleber Santos, whose job had brought him to Texas shortly after he was married. Santos' wife was also killed in the attack at their apartment in the Dallas suburb of Plano. Sigala was charged with the wife's slaying but was not tried.

CLEARWATER - Martin Grossman is scheduled to enter the death chamber at Florida State Prison just before 6 p.m. today and utter his final words to a gathering that includes relatives of the woman he killed. The family of wildlife officer Peggy Park has waited more than 25 years for this. "We need to see that it's finally finished, it's over and we can move on," said Betsy Park, the victim's younger siste

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Tuesday it will soon execute nine more convicted rioters in connection with unrest that erupted after the June presidential vote, a senior judiciary official was reported as saying.

Accused Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried and convicted and is likely to be executed, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Sunday. Interviewed on CNN's "State of the Union," show, Gibbs said: "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to meet justice and he's going to meet his maker. He will be brought to justice and he's likely to be executed for the heinous crimes he committed." Gibbs did not confirm reports that the Obama administration has begun looking for places other than the heart of New York City to prosecute self-professed mastermind Mohammed and four accused co-conspirators...

This is a link to a video blog: Synopsis: Bill O'Reilly and infobabes justify execution of American citizens without due process. They refer to an executive order as a "statute," completely driving by separation of powers. Next they shift topics and justify CPS harassment over joke pics on Facebook or raising a fat kid.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- The Australian government wants the death sentence an Afghan court has handed a former Australian soldier overturned, a government spokesman said Wednesday. A spokesman for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said his government will do everything it can to see that Robert Langdon, 38, is not executed, The Times of London reports. Langdon, who worked for the U.S. security contractor Four Horsemen, was convicted last October of fatally shooting an Afghan colleague and trying to blame the man's death on the Taliban. The incident occurred last May while Langdon was part of...

Iran said yesterday that it had executed two men for plotting to overthrow the regime. They are the first to be put to death after more than 100 dissidents went on trial following President Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election last June. The hangings of Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour marked an escalation in the regime’s attempts to crush the opposition movement through Iran’s clerical courts. The two men were hanged before dawn, hours before prosecutors announced death sentences for five more opposition members arrested in connection with the protests on the Shia holy day of Ashura last month in which...

A well-known face of the former government of Saddam Hussein widely known as Chemical Ali was executed Monday for ordering a gas attack on a Kurdish village in northern Iraq and for his role in other attacks that became notorious symbols of Mr. Hussein’s tenure. An Iraqi court had sentenced the man, Ali Hassan al-Majid, to death by hanging last week. He is known here as Chemical Ali because of the attack on the village of Halabja, in which more than 5,000 Kurds died. “I congratulate the Iraqi people for this sentence,” said a lawmaker, Safia Suhail. It was Mr....

Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed -- also known as Chemical Ali -- was executed Monday, an Iraqi government spokesman said. He was hanged after having been convicted on 13 counts of killings and genocide, Ali al-Dabagh said.

Execution set for Thursday Julius Young beat a Tulsa woman and her 6-year-old son to death in 1993. His execution will be the state's first for the year. DEATH ROWJulius Ricardo Young: The 60-year-old was convicted of the beating deaths of Joyland Morgan and her 6-year-old son, Kewan. Their bodies were discovered in separate rooms of their apartment on Oct. 1, 1993. Evidence indicated that Young broke into their Tulsa home and beat the woman and child with a blunt instrument.   By DEON J. HAMPTON World Staff Writer Published: 1/10/2010  2:26 AM Last Modified: 1/10/2010  4:46 AM A death-row inmate...

A man convicted of gunning down a police officer during an attempted bank robbery was set to receive a lethal injection Thursday, the first execution of the year in the nation's busiest death penalty state. Kenneth Mosley, 51, was condemned to death for the February 1997 slaying of David Moore, a Garalnd police officer. Mosley was set for execution twice last year but technical issues and court appeals stalled the punishment. His attorneys said his appeals now were exhausted. "We just can't find anything," Bruce Anton said. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied a request for clemency for...

A 33-year-old El Monte school board member and five other men were shot dead execution-style in north central Mexico on Wednesday night, after they were abducted by gunmen, according to family members. Agustin Roberto “Bobby” Salcedo was having dinner with his wife in a restaurant when armed men burst in and kidnapped Salcedo and five other men. All six were found dead Thursday, El Monte officials said. Salcedo’s wife was not abducted.

Four foreigners face execution over China drugs: report (AFP) – 5 hours ago HONG KONG — Four foreigners could face the death penalty in China after their arrests in connection with a major heroin bust, a report said Thursday, days after the execution of a Briton convicted on drugs charges. The foreigners are among nine people arrested in September in southern China after police uncovered about 145 kilograms (320 pounds) of heroin stuffed inside cotton bales, the Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao newspaper reported. The paper did not specify the nationalities of the four foreigners. "Under Chinese law they may...

Here is a video report on news that China has executed a British citizen for "Drug Smuggling," despite pleas from the British Government and his family to spare his life. Akmal Shaikh was arrested and charged with possessing heroin in 2007. Shaikh's family said he was mentally ill, and appealed to the Chinese to not execute him. The Chinese ambassador Fu Ying has been summoned to the Foreign Office amid a growing row between the UK and China over the execution of a British man. Akmal Shaikh, 53, a father-of-three from London, was executed in China after being convicted of...