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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California said on Tuesday it would revise its lethal injection procedure to ensure "a dignified end of life" for condemned inmates as it seeks to overcome a U.S. judge's objections to the procedure. In December, Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose ruled the "implementation of lethal injection is broken, but it can be fixed" and gave the nation's most-populous state a chance to revise how it metes out its ultimate punishment. Lawyers for a condemned California inmate had argued that lethal injection was "cruel and unusual" punishment barred by the U.S. Constitution. With the fate of...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A man convicted of killing a Memphis police officer in 1981 was executed early Wednesday after a court rejected defense pleas for more time to examine newly revised execution protocols. Philip Workman, whose execution had been delayed on five prior occasions, became Tennessee's third lethal injection since 2000. The Tennessee Supreme Court rejected a final defense request for more time to challenge the way the state carries out its three-chemical injection procedure. A federal judge halted Workman's execution last week over concerns about the revisions, but a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A federal judge in Nashville this afternoon delayed the scheduled execution of Philip Workman. He was scheduled to die by lethal injection early next Wednesday. U-S District Judge Todd Campbell ruled shortly after Workman's attorneys asked for a delay on grounds they did not have time to file complaints against new execution procedures. The new guidelines were released Wednesday. Workman was convicted for the 1981 shooting death of Memphis police Lieutenant Ronald Oliver after a fast food robbery. He twice has come within hours of execution before the courts stepped in. Campbell cited the likelihood that...

Tennessee is ready to resume executions under new rules it released Monday, using a three-drug lethal injection method opponents say is still inhumane and unconstitutional. Gov. Phil Bredesen will lift a 90-day moratorium on executions on Wednesday. Philip Workman, convicted of killing a Memphis police officer, is scheduled to die May 9. "It's essentially the same protocol as before, with a little window dressing," Nashville attorney Brad MacLean said. Among the complaints MacLean and other defense lawyers have about the execution method is the use of three chemicals to kill inmates. Last week a medical review of dozens of executions...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A death-row inmate who had vowed not to go willingly to the death chamber set a fire in his cell Thursday, but when the time came, walked to his death without a fight. Roy Lee Pippin, 51, was executed by lethal injection for the deaths of two Florida men gunned down in a dispute about missing drug money. From the gurney, he blamed the jury, the trial judge and the prosecutor, and said that he was innocent. "You will answer to your maker when God has found out that you have executed an innocent man. May God...

RICHMOND - Saying he felt morally correct but not necessarily politically correct, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine on Monday vetoed five bills that would expand the death penalty. "I feel like I did the right thing," said Kaine, who is opposed to the death penalty but pledged, when running for governor, not to scale back capital punishment laws. Kaine said he did not violate that promise. The five bills he vetoed would have increased the number of people who would be put to death by the state, he said. Two bills would have expanded the "triggerman rule," which provides that only...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The death penalty is under what may be an unprecedented review in the United States, mostly involving questions about lethal injection, by far the most common method of execution. "Although many of the stays of exeecutions are due to the lethal injection process, the openness of courts, of governors and legislators to reconsider issues that were thought to be settled is a sign of broad discomfort with the death penalty," said Richard Dieter, head of the Death Penalty Information Center, which works against capital punishment. About one-third of the 38 states that allow capital punishment have halted...

Iraq delays executions amid UN pressure By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 2:46pm GMT 04/01/2007 Iraq has postponed the execution of two former officials convicted alongside Saddam Hussein, bowing to international pressure to respect legal and religious traditions. The former dictator’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikrit and the ex-head of the Ba’athist revolutionary court, Awad Ahmed al-Bandar were to be hanged today but the government said the date had been put back. A spokesman for the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said pleas from outside Iraq, including a call for restraint from Ban Ki-moon, the new United Nations Secretary General,...

IRAN is said to have defied international pleas for clemency and hanged three ethnic Arabs convicted of "waging war on God".Another 11 Iranian Arabs are awaiting execution after being convicted in secret trials of involvement in a bombing spree. Neil Durkin, of Amnesty International, told The Scotsman: "We are seeking more details, including whether any of those executed received proper trials and had the right to appeals." Activists insist the men were innocent and had paid the price for merely hailing from the country's disadvantaged Arab minority, which is concentrated in Iran's oil-rich province of Khuzestan, bordering Iraq. Tehran has...

Iraqi authorities executed 13 men by hanging Tuesday after they were convicted of murder and kidnapping, lining them up in hoods and green jumpsuits with their hands bound behind their backs. In a rare move that came amid chaotic violence sweeping the capital, the Iraqi government recorded and distributed graphic television footage of the convicts in the moments before they were put to death. The footage was given to both Iraqi and foreign media. The images showed two men standing together on a gallows with nooses around their necks. Several of them stooped, and one had his arm around the...

After a botched execution that took 34 minutes to end a convicted murderer’s life, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has suspended all death sentences until a commission can review lethal-injection procedures “to ensure they don’t inflict cruel and unusual punishment on their helpless victims.” In a gesture of goodwill, Florida’s leading association of murderers also announced a temporary hold on premeditated and/or serial killings as well as brutal rapes, according to a spokesman, “until we can determine if some of our victims experience discomfort or pain.” The Sunshine State Coalition of Capital Criminals released the statement through its ACLU attorney, pledging...

Iranian photographer Jahangir Razmi, took 70 pictures of an execution in Kurdistan on Aug. 27, 1979. One picture (No. 20, below) won the Pulitzer Prize. It was, however, awarded to an unnamed photographer -- the only anonymous recipient in the 90-year history of the award. Mr. Razmi preserved 27 of the photos on a contact sheet and stowed it away in his home. Below are those photos -- made public for the first time. Photos: http://online.wsj.com/public/page/8_0004.html VIDEO - interview of WSJ reporter's story about identifying the photographer http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-iranpics0611-28.html

Shocking new evidence of the trade in human body parts has revealed how British patients could be buying organs from executed prisoners for £50,000.An undercover investigation has found doctors in China are willing to sell organs from death row prisoners to foreigners in need of a transplant. The grisly practice add to mounting evidence of how human organs are being traded around the globe. Only last week it emerged at least 40 British patients may have been given transplants using body parts stolen by a corpse-snatching gang. More than 1,000 bodies including that of veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke, were stolen...

The brutal excesses of Saddam Hussein's regime were relived yesterday as Iraq's new government announced that it had hanged 27 prisoners convicted of terror and criminal charges. Mass executions at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, which has several gallows erected in the execution chamber, were suspended after coalition-led troops overthrew Saddam three years ago. The death penalty was reinstituted in 2004, and yesterday's executions took place just days after control of Abu Ghraib was handed over to the Iraqi authorities. An Iraqi Justice Ministry official said two of those hanged had been convicted of terrorism charges, and the other 25 –...

American Medical Association President Dr. William G. Plested said Monday that medical professionals should not participate in executions of prisoners. "The American Medical Association is troubled by continuous refusal of many state courts and legislatures to acknowledge the ethical obligations of physicians, which strictly prohibit physician involvement in a legally authorized execution," he said in a statement. "The AMA's policy is clear and unambiguous - requiring physicians to participate in executions violates their oath to protect lives and erodes public confidence in the medical profession. "A physician is a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is...

Doctors shouldn't help put inmates to death by lethal injection or work with the legal system to ensure inmates don't feel pain when they are executed, said the president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists in a message to his colleagues. "The legal system has painted itself into this corner and it is not our obligation to get it out," Dr. Orin F. Guidry, president of the 40,000-member group, wrote in a message posted Friday on the organization's Web site. Patients could lose trust in their doctors if they see them as executioners, he wrote. Guidry said Monday he posted...

Excerpt - ST. LOUIS — A federal judge on Monday halted executions in Missouri until the state makes sweeping changes to ensure that inmates do not suffer excruciating pain when they are put to death. U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. cited "numerous problems" with the state's lethal injections, including a lack of a written protocol setting drug levels and a dyslexic doctor who is in charge of mixing the three drugs used. ~ snip ~

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court decided, in a 5-to-3 opinion, that a Tennessee prison inmate named Paul G. House was entitled to prove he did not commit the crime for which he was sent to death row. On the same day, I received a letter from Centurion Ministries, which argued for more than a decade that a Virginia man named Roger K. Coleman had not committed the crime for which he was executed in 1992. The letter admitted that Centurion had been wrong. These cases have something in common: they pivot on the question of innocence. For too many...

Less than two hours before he was to die by injection for three 1996 murders, Percy Levar Walton won a six-month reprieve from Gov. Timothy M. Kaine last night. The governor delayed the execution until Dec. 8 so Walton's long-debated mental capacity and competence to be executed can be independently evaluated.

Part of me died when I saw this cruel killing, HALA JABER EVEN by the stupefying standards of Iraq’s unspeakable violence, the murder of Atwar Bahjat, one of the country’s top television journalists, was an act of exceptional cruelty. Nobody but her killers knew just how much she had suffered until a film showing her death on February 22 at the hands of two musclebound men in military uniforms emerged last week. Her family’s worst fears of what might have happened have been far exceeded by the reality. Bahjat was abducted after making three live broadcasts from the edge of...