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A neighbor was arrested on Tuesday for raping and strangling a 9-year-old girl whose bloody body was found in a dumpster at their apartment complex in a Philadelphia suburb. James Lee Troutman, 36, was charged with 10 criminal counts in the death of Skyler Kauffman, whose bloody corpse was found a few hours after she disappeared on Monday. "Troutman admitted he choked Skyler to death with his hands," police said in an affidavit filed in court. "He also admitted that Skyler's head hit the floor a couple of times as least," the affidavit said. "Troutman stated that after he murdered...

The Obama administration has launched a quiet campaign over the past two months to seize from local officials a key drug used in lethal injections -- part of a spreading investigation that has contributed to a de facto death penalty freeze in several states. The investigation stems from concerns about the overseas source of the drug, though some question whether those concerns make a handy excuse to slow the pace of executions. "States have death penalty laws, and the federal government is trying to make it harder for the states to execute those laws," Saunders said.

South Carolina on Friday executed a man who strangled his cellmate, using a new combination of lethal injection drugs for the first time. Jeffrey Motts, 36, was declared dead at 6:17 p.m. He was given the sedative pentobarbital instead of sodium thiopental as part of the lethal three-drug combination because federal agents seized the state's supply as part of a nationwide investigation into whether prisons obtained the drugs legally from England. Motts was sentenced to death for killing his cellmate at a state prison in Greenville County in 2005. He was already serving a life sentence for killing two elderly...

(Reuters) - Texas on Tuesday carried out its first execution using a sedative often used to euthanize animals. Cary Kerr, 46, was put to death by lethal injection for the 2001 sexual assault and strangling of Pamela Horton. The new drug, pentobarbital, replaced sodium thiopental in Texas' three-drug execution protocol.

President Obama well may have begun another undeclared war - this time on states that try to enforce their own death penalty laws - on the dubious grounds that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved drugs intended to kill convicted killers. On March 15, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental, the first drug given under the three-drug lethal injection protocol used in most of the country's 34 death-penalty states. The DEA also asked Kentucky and Tennessee for their sodium thiopental to aid its investigation. Why? The DEA referred me to the Department of Justice,...

A 20-year-old Canadian man methodically stalked and tracked a Westmont woman before killing her Wednesday night in Oak Brook — even stopping to reload his gun and continue shooting during the attack. DuPage County Judge Michael Wolfe denied bail Thursday for Dmitry Smirnov of Surrey, British Columbia, who is charged with the first-degree murder of Jitka Vesel, 36. [snip] Berlin said Smirnov had done research on the Internet to determine if Illinois had the death penalty, deciding to go through with Vesel’s murder when he discovered it does not. Smirnov could face up to life in prison. His next scheduled...

Complete title: Brooklyn judge takes shot at AG Eric Holder over no death penalty for killer of two NYPD detectives A Brooklyn judge took a shot at U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Tuesday for "failing" to go to the Supreme Court to appeal a ruling that tossed out the death penalty for a convicted killer of two NYPD detectives. Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis bristled with emotion when he ordered federal prosecutors to obtain a letter from Holder pledging the government's intention to seek the death sentence against Ronell Wilson in a retrial of the penalty phase of his 2007 trial....

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a last-minute stay of execution for Cleve Foster, a convicted murderer scheduled to die later this afternoon in Texas. The ruling follows the court's decision Monday afternoon to stay the execution of Daniel Cook, a convicted murderer who had been scheduled to die Tuesday in Arizona. Both men raised claims that they had been denied the effective assistance of counsel, and the Supreme Court's back-to-back stays could signal its interest in tackling issues regarding the adequacy of representation, said lawyers for the inmates. "I'm over the moon," said Maurie Levin, who represented Mr. Foster in...

Imprisoned former Gov. George Ryan is known around the world for clearing Illinois’ Death Row in 2003 and imposing a moratorium on the death penalty. But the governor who pardoned more than 200 people admitted in a recently released court deposition that he “didn’t understand” the difference between two major types of pardons and that he was declaring a Chicago inmate innocent by the way he pardoned him . . .

Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against the couple accused in the slaying of their 10-year-old adopted daughter. Prosecutor Gail Levine made the announcement Monday morning as Jorge and Carmen Barahona appeared in a Miami-Dade County courtroom. The Barahonas, who face first-degree murder charges and a slew of child abuse and neglect charges, both pleaded not guilty. Jorge Barahona cried in court on Monday and wore a vest used for inmates on suicide watch.

More than 1,000 protesters have registered in advance, declaring that they intend to gather next to the “Strings Bridge” at the entrance to Jerusalem at 6:00 p.m. Wednesday to demand establishment of a death penalty for convicted terrorists. The massive outpouring of rage and sadness comes in the wake of last week's terrorist attack in the Samaria Jewish community of Itamar.

The Drug Enforcement Administration on Tuesday seized the state of Georgia's supply of a key lethal injection drug less than two months after the state executed a man who unsuccessfully argued it was bought from a "fly-by-night" supplier in Britain. Agency spokesman Chuvalo Truesdell wouldn't elaborate on exactly why the DEA wanted to inspect Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental, a sedative that is part of a three-drug cocktail used in executions that has been in short supply since the sole U.S. manufacturer stopped making it. "We had questions about how the drug was imported to the U.S.," he said. "There...

ATLANTA (AP) -- A Drug Enforcement Administration official says the agency has seized Georgia's supply of a key lethal injection drug because of questions about how the drug was imported to the U.S. DEA spokesman Chuvalo Truesdell confirmed Tuesday the sodium thiopental had been seized from Georgia.

For 27 years, a heartbroken father turned victims' rights advocate penned hundreds of letters and newspaper articles, slamming the California judicial system that let his daughter's killer languish on death row with no execution date in sight. All the while, his nemesis, serial killer Dean Carter, churned out missives of his own in a blog that decried San Quentin's slow mail service, cramped conditions and restrictive visitation policies while commenting on social issues such as elections, budget deficits, school violence and O.J. Simpson.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed a death penalty ban into law on Wednesday, making Illinois the 16th state to end capital punishment. Quinn also commuted the sentences of the 15 inmates on death row in the state. Instead, they will serve life in prison without parole. The ban on executions will take effect July 1. “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history,” the Democratic governor said after he signed the bill. “I think it’s the right and just thing to abolish the death penalty.” Illinois last performed an execution in 1999. In 2000, then-Gov. George Ryan placed a moratorium on executions...

George Cullins' long-held prediction was right. He died before the serial killer who murdered his daughter could be executed. Cullins, 88 and a former longtime North County resident, died in an Antelope Valley hospital Tuesday, about four months after a car crash left him and his wife hospitalized, family friends Louise and Walter Rogers said Friday. Dean Carter, the man who murdered Cullins' daughter in 1984, sits on California's death row, where he has lived since February 1990. He is serving a separate death sentence for killing three Los Angeles women...

Obama backs end to death penalty? By Dave McKinney Sun-Times Media Last Modified: Mar 4, 2011 09:18PM President Barack Obama has appeared to tip his hand on Illinois’ bill to end the death penalty, which Gov. Pat Quinn is expected to act upon within the week. During a recent encounter with Quinn at the White House last week, the president praised the bill as well as Illinois’ legalization of civil unions, said state Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago), a lead legislative backer of the death penalty bill and Obama’s successor in the Illinois Senate. Raoul spoke with Quinn after Quinn returned...

Suspected Tucson gunman Jared Loughner has been indicted on 46 new charges, including the murders of a federal judge and an aide to congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The new indictment, by a federal grand jury in Arizona, is the first step in a formal Department of Justice process to decide whether to seek the death penalty against the 22-year-old.

. Said Musa (left), an Afghan Red Cross volunteer who worked for the rehabilitation of amputees, faces death penalty for his conversion to Christianity. Religious leaders in Nashville and across the U.S. want Afghanistan's government to live up to [a] sacred Islamic text [about "no compulsion in religion"]. They've organized a Twitter campaign on behalf of Said Musa, a former aid worker in Afghanistan imprisoned since May. His crime? Apostasy, for leaving Islam. According to published reports, Musa, sometimes referred to as Sayed Mossa, faces the death penalty. That's not acceptable, said Ed Stetzer, president of Nashville-based LifeWay Research. "We...

The New York Times ran an editorial today about federal judge Jeremy Fogel and his ruling five years ago in Morales v. Tilton. Fogel, it notes, ordered California "to halt all executions after he found that the way it administered its lethal injection created too much risk that an inmate would suffer extreme pain." Quoth the edit: For legislators in state capitols considering whether to abolish the penalty, however, this case has done much more than that. It has documented how lethal injection can be cruel and unusual punishment when unprofessionally administered and how the culture of prisons breeds that...