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Jurors were supposed to begin hearing arguments this morning on why they should save convicted killer Rejon Taylor’s life, but a series of “inflammatory” phones calls Mr. Taylor made to his family within the last two weeks prompted the judge to continue the case until next Monday. “We’re going to be asking the jury to sentence (Mr. Taylor) to death, and this is one of the reasons why,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Neff told U.S. District Judge Curtis L. Collier Tuesday, trying to persuade him to let the jurors hear the contents of the phone conversations. According to some of...

Medellin Execute For Rape, Murder of Houston Teens Link Only

A federal appeals court yesterday refused to reconsider the decision denying a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal in the 1981 murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. In a two-page decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied Abu-Jamal's request for a rehearing of his appeal in the controversial case, which has helped fuel an international debate about the death penalty. Abu-Jamal's lawyer, Robert R. Bryan of San Francisco, said he planned to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case. In March, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit left intact Abu-Jamal's conviction but said...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Mexico appealed to the U.N.'s highest court Thursday to block the executions of Mexicans in the United States, arguing U.S. officials have failed to comply with a judgment ordering a review of their trials. The International Court of Justice said Mexico asked the court for an "interpretation" of an earlier ruling to clarify its meaning when it asked the U.S. to "review and reconsider" the cases of the condemned prisoners. Until that can be done, Mexico said the United States "must take any and all steps necessary" to ensure that none of its citizens is executed,...

Nothing like starting out the day with a good death penalty joke. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared Tuesday at a conference on alternative energy in Irvine co-hosted by the University of California, Irvine, the Milken Institute and New Majority California, a group of wealthy moderate Republicans who have donated to the governor. Schwarzenegger explained how he is trying to bring Democrats and Republicans together. "So this is why to make sure of that I proposed something entirely new, which is to have a solar-powered electric chair," Schwarzenegger said, provoking laughter. "There's something in there for both parties so everyone can be...

The U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down this week validating a lethal injection execution procedure in Kentucky is likely to jump-start executions in many states across the country but not in California. Our state uses the same three-drug protocol the court declared constitutional in a Kentucky case, but the legal flaws with California's death penalty procedure go beyond that one issue. In a detailed 2006 review of the state's death penalty procedures, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel called the state's "pervasive lack of professionalism" in carrying out executions "deeply disturbing." In calling for a temporary halt of the state's death...

The U.S. Supreme Court opened the door today to the resumption of capital punishment nationwide, ruling that the combination of drugs that California and most other states use to execute inmates does not cause a substantial risk of severe pain and therefore is constitutional. The justices' 7-2 ruling came in a case from Kentucky, which like California uses a powerful anesthetic to render an inmate unconscious, followed by a paralyzing drug that halts breathing and a chemical that stops the heart. At least 30 states of the 36 that provide for lethal injection use that combination. Condemned prisoners in virtually...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Los Angeles man's last remaining challenge to his death sentence for the murder of a student librarian in 1978, one of the oldest cases on California's Death Row. Stevie Lamar Fields had won a reversal of his sentence in 2000 from a federal judge, who ruled that he should get a new penalty trial because the jury foreman cited biblical passages to his fellow jurors after a majority had voted in favor of a life sentence. But a federal appeals court reinstated the death sentence last year, and the high court denied...

Seven Mexican-born inmates on Texas' death row lost their bid Monday to state their case before the U.S. Supreme Court, following the court's ruling last week that another Mexican-born inmate's case couldn't be reopened despite an order from President Bush. Justices last week voted 6-3 against hearing the case of Jose Medellin, convicted of the rape-slayings of two Houston teenagers 15 years ago, saying Bush overstepped his authority by trying to order Texas to reopen Medellin's case. That decision removed a legal hurdle blocking Medellin's execution. An international court ruled in 2004 that the convictions of Medellin and 50 other...

Court: Mumia Deserves New Hearing Mar 27 10:02 AM US/Eastern PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A federal appeals court has ordered a new penalty hearing for celebrity death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal (moo-MEE'-ah AH'-boo jah- MAHL'). The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says Abu-Jamal's conviction for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer should stand. But it says he should get a new sentencing hearing because of flawed jury instructions. If prosecutors don't want to give him a new death penalty hearing, Abu-Jamal would be sentenced automatically to life in prison. A Philadelphia jury convicted Abu-Jamal of killing Officer Daniel...

HOUSTON, (AP) -- A convicted killer sent to death row for killing a sheriff's deputy apparently committed suicide in his cell, prison officials said Tuesday. The body of Jesus Flores, 25, was found by a corrections officer about 4 a.m. Tuesday. Flores was pronounced dead about an hour later, said Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "He had lacerations on his throat and forehead," she said. Flores apparently tried to use his own blood to scribble a message on the wall, but it was illegible, Lyons said. Flores was convicted of capital murder for the...

Maureen Faulkner, the wife of deceased Philadelphia police officer Danny Faulkner, who was murdered back in 1981,at the age of 25, is photographed at her home in Ventura County. In the 26 years since former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal gunned down her cop husband on a Philadelphia street, Maureen Faulkner has often felt like a reed in a tornado. As death penalty opponents around the world rallied to win Abu-Jamal a new trial, contending that he had been framed by local police, Faulkner quietly fought back one hearing at a time. She never missed a court hearing through the...

PHILADELPHIA, (AP) -- It's a case that has been examined and re-examined for more than two decades: the murder of a white police officer by a former Black Panther. Mumia Abu-Jamal's fatal shooting of Daniel Faulkner has become one of the most prominent death row cases in the world. But throughout 26 years of litigation, one part of the story has been largely overshadowed. The officer's widow, Maureen Faulkner, talks about her side of the case in "Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Loss, Pain and Injustice," a book written with political pundit and conservative radio talk-show host Michael...

NASHVILLE — Tennessee isn’t likely to execute any prisoners on death row until next summer, Gov. Phil Bredesen said Thursday. Bredesen, a Democrat, said the state will wait until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case of two Kentucky death row inmates who argue the method amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Bredesen said he doesn’t expect the high court to rule until May or June. “And that’s going to give a huge amount of guidance to governors, and to federal judges and district attorneys, and to an awful lot of people involved in this process,” he said. U.S....

The killer of a Pittsburg police officer said in court Friday that he was fine with being sentenced to death but had no interest in hearing from the slain man's family, telling a judge, "Let me get on my way." "I'm not asking for sympathy," Alexander Hamilton, 20, said in a Martinez courtroom before formally being sentenced to die for killing Officer Larry Lasater after robbing a bank in 2005. "I got the death penalty. I ain't got no problem with that." But he told Judge Laurel Brady of Contra Costa County Superior Court that he didn't see any point...

MOBILE, Ala.—A federal appeals court Wednesday granted a stay of execution for a terminally ill convicted killer who claimed his cancer medication would counteract with lethal injection drugs and inflict unnecessary pain. Daniel Lee Siebert, 53, was facing the death penalty Thursday for strangling two women and two young boys in 1986. He has been on Alabama's death row for more than 20 years and has terminal pancreatic cancer. In granting the stay, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta reversed an order by U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller in Montgomery. The panel noted...

Huntsville, Texas (AP) -- The nation's busiest death penalty state executed another inmate Tuesday night, hours after the Supreme Court said it would review whether the lethal injection method most states use is cruel and unusual. Michael Richard, 49, was put to death for the 1986 shooting of Marguerite Lucille Dixon, a 53-year-old nurse and mother of seven. Richard had been released from his second prison term eight weeks before Dixon was raped and killed inside her home. Asked if he'd like to make a final statement, Richard said, "I'd like my family to take care of each other. I...

MARTINEZ -- Alexander Hamilton, who was 18 when he murdered Pittsburg police Officer Larry Lasater, should die by execution, a jury recommended today. The Contra Costa County jury that heard evidence over two weeks in Hamilton's penalty trial reached its verdict in less than a day of deliberations. The jurors convicted Hamilton and his co-defendant, 20-year-old Andrew Moffett, last month of murder, robbery and special circumstances. The duo robbed a Pittsburg Raley's supermarket and a Wells Fargo Bank branch inside the store on April 23. Hamilton shot 35-year-old Officer Larry Lasater as the officer pursued him on the De Anza...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) _ A Gulf War veteran from Tennessee who murdered four children with an assault rifle has been executed. Death row inmate Daryl Holton was pronounced dead at 1:25 a.m. CDT Wednesday. He is the first Tennessee inmate put to death by electrocution since 1960. The 45-year-old Holton had confessed to shooting his three young sons and their half-sister in 1997 in the town of Shelbyville, about 50 miles south of Nashville. Holton told police he killed the children because his ex-wife had denied him from seeing them. He also said he intended to kill his ex-wife and...

Toledo, Ohio (AP) -- The mother of a condemned inmate whose execution took an hour longer than is typical sued the head of Ohio's prisons Monday, asking the state to change the way it carries out death sentences. It took almost 90 minutes to execute Joseph Clark in May 2006; executions last 20 minutes on average. The lawsuit said the execution amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. Joining Irma Clark and her family at a news conference Monday was Michael Manning, whose brother David was killed by Clark in November 1984. "Nobody should have to die a horrible death,"...