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Health - HealthDay U.S. Executions by Lethal Injection May Not Be Humane 1 hour, 3 minutes ago Health - HealthDay THURSDAY, April 14 (HealthDay News) -- Prisoner executions by lethal injection in the United States may not be painless or humane, and may not even meet veterinary standards for putting down animals. So claims a research letter in this week's issue of The Lancet. The authors concluded that prisoners executed by lethal injection may have experienced awareness and unnecessary suffering as they died because they weren't properly sedated. Anesthesia during lethal injection is essential to minimize the prisoner's suffering. Lethal...

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Two people have been arrested in the murder of an Egyptian Christian family, authorities said Friday. The suspects were to be arraigned Friday afternoon in state Superior Court. The Hudson County prosecutor's office would not release the identities of those arrested or the charges they face until they appear in court.

Authorities have made a major break in the case of the slain Jersey City family, with two suspects scheduled to be arraigned today. Although the Hudson County prosecutor's office isn't releasing the names of the two people or saying what the charges are, local press reports one of them is a former tenant of the building where the Coptic Christian family lived and was found murdered Jan. 14. As WorldNetDaily reported, Hossam Armanious, was found in his home with his wife and two daughters -- Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8 -- bound and gagged with their throats slashed.

JERUSALEM -- It was midnight in the West Bank city of Ramallah where the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat spent the final years of his stormy life. Out of nowhere, a squad of gunmen appeared in Manara Square with an unarmed 20-year old civilian in tow. They stood him up, took aim and opened fire. His bullet-riddled body was discovered at dawn by unfazed pedestrians. Summary executions are par for the course of the so-called Palestinian Revolution. The victim this time was accused of informing on two members of Hamas and Fatah who were killed by Israeli troops in Betunya,...

A mass grave being excavated in a north Iraqi village has yielded evidence that Iraqi forces executed women and children under Saddam Hussein. US-led investigators have located nine trenches in Hatra containing hundreds of bodies believed to be Kurds killed during the repression of the 1980s. The skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys are being unearthed, the investigators said. They are seeking evidence to try Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity. It is believed to be the first time investigators working for the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) have conducted a full scientific exhumation of a mass grave. "It...

Amnesty International Outraged at Execution of a 16 Year Old Girl! Public Statement Amnesty International today expressed its outrage at the reported execution of a girl who is believed to be 16 years old, Ateqeh Rajabi, in Neka in the northern Iranian province of Mazandaran, on 15 August, for "acts incompatible with chastity" (amal-e manafe-ye 'ofat). Ateqeh Rajabi was reportedly publicly hanged on a street in the city centre of Neka. Amnesty International is alarmed that this execution was carried out despite reports that Ateqeh Rajabi was not believed to be mentally competent, and that she reportedly did not have...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, the American Medical Association and 48 nations are among those who lobbied the Supreme Court Monday to end the execution of killers who committed their crimes before age 18. The United States is among only a handful of nations that allow the practice. The high court will reconsider this fall whether such executions are constitutional. "By continuing to execute child offenders in violation of international norms, the United States is not just leaving itself open to charges of hypocrisy, but is also endangering the rights of many around the world," said a friend...

Savage executions in the Arab world must be condemned as wrong by anyone's standards David Aaronovitch, columnist of the year Sunday May 16, 2004 The Observer A man from Maidstone had this letter published in the Independent last week. 'Why is it barbaric,' he asked, 'to decapitate an innocent man with a knife but civilised to do it with a laser-guided bomb?' Or to rephrase the question, is the video executioner of Nicholas Berg in any way morally deficient compared to the general or politician who gives an order that - whatever the intention - will almost certainly lead to...

The legacy of a mass murderer.A field outside Baghdad THE DEAD DON'T TALK in Iraq but their graves do. In northern Iraq, a grave was unearthed last July with several thousand bodies, mostly women and children. From the bullet holes in the top of the skulls, it was clear the deaths weren't natural. The victims had been shot from above while kneeling or after being forced into a mass grave. They had personal household items with them like baskets. They had their clothes on. These were clues that helped identify their hometown and led to the conclusion they'd been compelled...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Kidnappers have released up to 12 foreigners taken hostage in Iraq, a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council said Monday. Meanwhile, two U.S. troops and seven employees of American contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton, were missing following an attack "two days ago" on a convoy near Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said Monday. He refused to say whether they had been abducted. More than 30 foreigners from at least 12 countries — including a Mississippi man whose fate also was unclear — have been kidnapped in recent days...

A new study softens Texas' image as the nation's death penalty capital, finding the state doles out death sentences less often than even Oregon, a state better known for approving assisted suicide than for demanding capital punishment. Figures in this month's Journal of Empirical Legal Studies show Texas imposed death penalties in 2 percent of murder cases that had an arrest — just below the national average and slightly behind Oregon, which ranked No. 15 among the 31 states with more than 10 inmates on death row. By comparing death sentences with solved murder cases between 1977 and 1999, the...

Utah May End Executions by Firing Squad Reporters look at the chair where John Albert Taylor was later strapped into and executed in by a firing squad, during a media tour of the execution chamber in Utah State Prison at Point of the Mountain, Utah, Jan. 24, 1996. The Utah Senate approved a bill Thursday, Feb. 19, 2004, that would eliminate firing squad executions - used most recently here in 1996 - unless lethal injection executions are found unconstitutional. There has not been an execution by firing squad in the United States since Taylor's execution in 1996. Utah moved toward...

DALLAS - Despite its reputation as the nation's death penalty leader, Texas is less likely than some other states to sentence convicted murders to death, according to a new study. It is, however, more likely than other states to carry out a death sentence once it is imposed, according to the study, sponsored by the Cornell Law School Death Penalty Project, which provides legal services to death-row inmates. Texas actually trails the national average when it comes to the percentage of people convicted of murder who are sentenced to death, says the study, published in the new Journal of Empirical...

Executing young killers to be reviewedSupreme Court will weigh whether death is cruel, unusual penalty10:19 PM CST on Monday, January 26, 2004Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas – Twenty-six Texas death row inmates, including three scheduled for lethal injection in the coming months, would be affected if the U.S. Supreme Court bars execution of convicted killers whose crimes were committed when they were younger than 18. The high court, which two years ago abolished executions for the mentally retarded, said Monday that it would reopen the question of whether executing very young killers violates the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."...

Dozens of activists protested outside Beirut's parliament Lebanon has resumed capital punishment by executing three convicted murderers despite international protests. The three were executed in Beirut's Roumieh prison early on Saturday - two by firing squad and one by hanging. They were the first prisoners to face the death penalty in Lebanon since President Emile Lahoud came to power in late 1998. The EU and human rights groups had urged the Beirut government not to carry out the sentences. Under Lebanese law, a death sentence has to be approved by the president, prime minister and justice minister. The men's...

Osbaldo Torres, a convicted murderer on Oklahoma's Death Row, might have been dead by now -- his appeals exhausted, his time up. But 15 judges in The Hague, acting at the request of the Mexican government, have ordered his execution stayed for now, so he is alive in a cell in McAlester, awaiting the next move from the Netherlands. The judges also ordered stays in the cases of Texas Death Row inmates Cesar Fierro Reyna and Roberto Moreno Ramos, both Mexican citizens. Texas officials' response to the court's order could not be learned Thursday night. Execution dates have not been...

Scientists carefully document thousands so carelessly killed MAHAWEEL, Iraq - The killers kept bankers' hours. They showed up for work at the barley field at 9 a.m., trailed by backhoes and three buses filled with blindfolded men, women and children as young as 1. Every day, witnesses say, the routine was the same: The backhoes dug a trench. Fifty people were led to the edge of the hole and shot, one by one, in the head. The backhoes covered them with dirt, then dug another hole for the next group. At 5 p.m., the killers - officials of Saddam Hussein's...

Death Chamber Unusually Quiet in Texas By MICHAEL GRACZYK Associated Press Writer HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- The state is in the midst of its longest break in executions in seven years, a lull some attribute to coincidence but others say may be due to recent changes affecting death row prisoners. So far this year, 21 convicted killers have been put to death in the nation's busiest death chamber, the last in September. But no one is on Texas' execution calendar again until December, when four are planned in about a week's time. The last time the state went so long...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two Iraqi scientists were shot in Baghdad after they talked to the U.S.-led team hunting weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and others believe they will be in danger if they collaborate in the search, Washington's chief weapons inspector David Kay said on Friday. Kay, who is directing the WMD hunt as an adviser to the CIA, presented an interim report to U.S. lawmakers this week that said no banned weapons had yet been found. Some Iraqi scientists have sought relocation in the United States out of fear for the safety of their families, and others who...

Guarded by hundreds of armed rebels deep in a malaria-infested jungle, three American captives pass the time playing with a homemade deck of cards and dreaming of their families. The threat of death always hangs nearby. The three U.S. military contractors have been cut off from the outside world since their capture by rebels seven months ago. That isolation was broken when a Colombian journalist traveled for days over rough roads and jungle rivers with a rebel escort to interview them July 25 in remote southern Colombia. "They were nervous, and there were traces of fear on their faces," freelance...