Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The U.S. Supreme Court granted a temporary stay of execution for a Georgia inmate whose attorneys argue that the 59-year-old black man's death sentence was tainted by a juror's racial bias. Keith Leroy Tharpe, known as "Bo," was set to be put to death at 7 p.m. EDT Tuesday at the state prison by injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Gov. Rick Scott has the power to remove cases from controversial state's attorney Aramis Ayala . The ruling, 5-2, means that it was within Scott's legal authority under the state Constitution to remove 24 capital cases from Ayala's purview, the Orlando Political Observer reports .
Florida has put a man to death with an anesthetic never used before in a U.S. lethal injection, carrying out its first execution in more than 18 months on an inmate convicted of two racially motivated murders. Authorities said 53-year-old Mark Asay, the first white man executed in Florida for the killing of a black man, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. Thursday at the state prison in Starke.
This past Tuesday, well over one hundred and fifty years since the end of the Civil War, a powerful, well-connected, well-to-do Southern white man, Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, exercised his law-given authority to stay the execution of Marcellus Williams, a poor black man. The reprieve was issued hours before the scheduled pumping of caustic chemicals by state officials into Williams's body.
Since Florida reinstated the death penalty in 1976, at least 20 black men have been executed for killing white victims, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center. On Thursday, Mark James Asay - a former white supremacist prison gang member once inked with a swastika tattoo - is scheduled to become the first, by way of lethal injection with a drug never before used in a U.S. execution.
Florida on Thursday put a man to death with an anesthetic never used before in a U.S. lethal injection, carrying out its first execution in more than 18 months on an inmate convicted of two racially motivated murders. Authorities said 53-year-old Mark Asay, the first white man executed in Florida for the killing of a black man, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. Thursday at the state prison in Starke.
For the first time in state history, Florida is expecting to execute a white man Thursday for killing a black person - and it plans to do so with the help of a drug that has never been used before in any U.S. execution. Barring a stay, Mark Asay, 53, is scheduled to die by lethal injection after 6 p.m. Asay was convicted by a jury of two racially motivated, premeditated murders in Jacksonville in 1987.
With only hours to spare, the governor of the US state of Missouri on Tuesday halted the execution of a man whose lawyers argued new DNA evidence exonerated him of a 1998 murder. Governor Eric Greitens stayed the execution of Marcellus Williams, 48, who was convicted of fatally stabbing a woman more than 40 times during a robbery at her home in the Midwestern state.
The court on Monday ruled 6-1 that the state can go ahead with the scheduled Aug. 24 execution of Mark Asay. Asay, 53, was originally scheduled to be executed in March 2016, for the 1987 murders of Robert Lee Booker and Robert McDowell in Jacksonville.
A Texas appellate court issued an opinion Friday upholding a Bowie County jury's decision to find a man who beat a former girlfriend's 2-year-old son to death and injured her daughter guilty of capital murder and injury to a child. Clifford James Gayton Jr., 20, was found guilty in December at the end of a trial before 102nd District Judge Bobby Lockhart.
States are taking a new look at juvenile life without parole after the U.S. Supreme Court last year applied its ban on no-parole sentences for minors retroactively and said that all but the rare irredeemable juvenile offender should have a chance at parole one day.
A man faces charges after the deaths of 10 illegal immigrants who were crammed into the back of a truck with scores more. A US truck driver has told police in Texas he didn't know he was hauling dead and dying immigrants, crammed in a trailer in stifling head.
Executions have been on hold in Florida since the U.S. Supreme Court deemed parts of the state's sentencing procedure unconstitutional in January 2016. That same month, Scott first signed a death warrant for Mark Asay, as member station WFSU reported .
The order provides such changes like eliminating paralytic drugs for lethal injections, providing witnesses with more access to watch prisoners inside the death chamber, limitations on the department director's authority to change drugs, and time allotted to prisoners to challenge any drug changes. The changes are the result of a settlement reached in a 2014 lawsuit [Reuters report] brought by seven death row inmates who argued Arizona's policies were experimental and caused unnecessary suffering.
In 2007, a jury convicted Liberty City native Harrel Braddy of kidnapping a 5-year-old and leaving her to die on the side of Interstate 75, where she was eaten alive by alligators . It was an important holdout: The split decision means that ten years later, Braddy will be granted one more chance to avoid the death penalty.
Arkansas executed two inmates on April 24 in back-to-back lethal injections, which marks the country's first double execution in 17 years. When the state of Arkansas announced plans to carry out eight executions in an 11-day period in April , it drew intense international scrutiny that flared until well after the final lethal injection in the series at the end of the month .
Alex Kozinski, the controversial judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, recently gave an interview on the subject of ways and means of capital punishment, purportedly a professed supporter of it. He said the use of lethal injections was virtually barbaric, precipitating slow and often painful death.
In Kansas Supreme Court, convicted killers Jonathan Daniel Carr and Reginald Dexter Carr Jr. sought life in prison Thursday rather than death penalties.
By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS, Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio - Is unorthodox the same as cruel and unusual punishment? It's the central question of the current U.S. death penalty debate, highlighted by the latest execution involving a disputed sedative that appeared to involve discomfort to the inmate. States struggling to find lethal drugs believe they've got the answer in midazolam, a sedative that's taking the place of barbiturates and anesthetics no longer available because drug manufacturers don't want them used in executions.