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Protester who threatened city council weeps at arraignment

State personnel failed to establish an IV line to serial killer Thomas Eugene Creech The state of Idaho was unable to execute Thomas Eugene Creech on Thursday, one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the U.S. Medical personnel administering the lethal injection failed to establish an IV line despite trying for roughly an hour. The U.S. Supreme Court had denied all motions to block the process on Wednesday morning, allowing the execution to move forward. The death warrant is now being allowed to expire and will need to be renewed for a later attempt. Prior to the failed execution,...

For nearly 50 years, Idaho's prison staffers have been serving Thomas Eugene Creech three meals a day, checking on him during rounds and taking him to medical appointments. This Wednesday, some of Idaho's prison staffers will be asked to kill the convicted serial killer. Barring any last-minute stay, the 73-year-old, one of the nation's longest-serving death row inmates, will be executed by lethal injection for killing a fellow prisoner with a battery-filled sock in 1981. Creech's killing of David Jensen, a young, disabled man who was serving time for car theft, was his last in a broad path of destruction...

Idaho is moving forward with legislation that would allow the execution of child rapists. The Idaho Capital Sun reports that the legislation, introduced by Republican lawmakers, will target those who have committed the most serious offenses against children as well as repeat offenders. The bill passed the Idaho House by a 57-11 vote. The legislation states: This legislation amends Idaho Codes 18-1508 and 19-2515 to allow a sentence of capital punishment for a person convicted of lewd conduct with a minor, if said minor is under the age of twelve (12) and there are aggravating circumstances. Upon conviction, a jury...

The White House said Friday it was “deeply troubled” after Alabama executed a man using nitrogen gas in a first-of-its-kind capital punishment. “The reports of Kenneth Smith and his death last night obviously is very troubling. It is very troubling to us as an administration, it is very troubling to us here at the White House,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. “The president has long said and has had deep deep concerns with how the death penalty is implemented and whether it is consistent … with our values,” she added. Smith was put to death Thursday in Alabama night...

Kenneth Eugene Smith has become the first person in history to be executed with nitrogen gas. The convicted killer, 58, was put to death in the William C. Holman facility's execution chamber in Atmore, Alabama. After the reading of his last rights, a tight gas mask was placed over Smith's nose and mouth, before a stream of 100 percent nitrogen gas suffocated him. The gas mask remained on his face for 15 minutes to ensure the murderer was dead. Witnesses were led into the viewing room at 6:55pm, and Smith was pronounced dead half an hour later. Despite fears over...

Kenneth Eugene Smith has become the first person in history to be executed with nitrogen gas. The convicted killer, 58, had a tight gas mask placed over his nose and mouth before a stream of 100 percent nitrogen gas suffocated him inside the execution chamber at the William C. Holman prison in Atmore, Alabama. Smith was officially pronounced dead at 8:25 local time, following a 22-minute ordeal where he appeared to remain conscious for several minutes. He shook violently and pulled on the restraints on the gurney, continuing to breathe the nitrogen gas heavily until he succumbed and passed out....

Attorneys for the spiritual adviser of a soon-to-be executed inmate filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that the restrictions placed upon the adviser due to the method of execution are "hostile to religion." Officials with the Alabama Department of Corrections instructed the Rev. Jeff Hood that it could be dangerous to his health when he stands by Kenneth Eugene Smith in the execution chamber, according to a report. Smith is slated to be the first inmate in Alabama to be put to death via nitrogen gas, and Hood purportedly was asked to sign a waiver recognizing the risks that could arise...

Indi Gregory was mandated to die by the courts despite offers of continued treatment and legal protection by the Italian government and Vatican leaders. Indi Gregory, the 8-month-old infant who was forced off life support by the United Kingdom courts system, was baptized before her death despite her family not originally being religious. Dean Gregory, Indi's father, said before her death that he was inspired to baptize his daughter by Christian legal volunteers who fought to keep her alive. Dean said he became convinced of the existence of the devil by his family's treatment in the courtroom. "I am not...

Alabama's Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the state to execute an inmate using nitrogen gas. The state's attorney general’s request for an execution warrant for Kenneth Eugene Smith was granted in a 6-2 decision by an all-Republican court. Last year, the Alabama Department of Corrections called off the execution of Smith when the people responsible for connecting two intravenous lines to him for lethal injection could not do so. While the ruling moves the state closer to becoming the first to attempt execution with nitrogen gas, there is likely to be additional legal dispute on the matter. Alabama joins Oklahoma...

SOMEWHERE IN THE U.S. SOUTH — It was a choice to melt down Robert E. Lee. But it would have been a choice to keep him intact, too. So the statue of the Confederate general that once stood in Charlottesville — the one that prompted the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 — was now being cut into fragments and dropped into a furnace, dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.

After botching a series of executions by lethal injection, the State of Alabama is planning to use nitrogen gas to put condemned prisoners to death. The first execution will amount to a human experiment, because neither Alabama nor any other state has ever tried to kill people this way. Late last month, prison guards distributed the state’s new execution protocol to prisoners in solitary confinement on Alabama’s death row. One hundred and sixty men and five women await execution in Alabama. They would be secured to a gurney, their nose and mouth would be covered by a mask, and nitrogen...

Russian scientist Dr. Dmitry Fedyanin seemed to die doing what he loved. German officials say the 34-year-old expert in ultra-violet light and a senior research fellow at the Nanooptics Department of Siegen University in Germany fell to his death Berchtesgadener Alps National Park after following his hiking app over a cliff. Fedyanin’s body was found at the bottom of Hoher Laafeld peak, which sits at about 7,000 feet. Fedyanin was using his hiking app to make his way down the mountain but the route he was taking didn’t have paths and the app “sent him over mountain precipice.” “Our investigators...

“Craig Robertson, come out with your hands up! This is the FBI.” That’s what residents of a quaint, suburban neighborhood pushed up against Provo Canyon near the BYU campus say they woke up to in the early morning hours Wednesday. “It sounded like it was coming from inside my house,” said one neighbor, who asked not to be identified. What followed was a barrage of gunshots. Moments later, authorities carried the overweight, elderly man out of his house, placed him on the sidewalk and tried, unsuccessfully, to render first aid, according to the witness. Several neighbors said his body remained...

Singapore City: Human Right Advocates have shared that Singapore will be executing a woman for the first time in 19 years. The Singaporean national was found guilty of drug trafficking and will be facing capital punishment for her crime tomorrow - July 28, 2023. Saridewi Djamani, 45, was found guilty of trafficking around 30g (1.06oz) of heroin in 2018. Djamani is the second drug convict to be executed in the past three days. Before her, Mohd Aziz bin Hussain, 56, was executed at Singapore's Changi Prison and has been buried by the authrauthorities. He was sentenced to death in 2018...

On this date in 1783, Diego Cristobal Tupac Amaru — cousin and successor to the famed indigenous rebel Tupac Amaru II — was tortured to death in Cusco. After Tupac Amaru’s execution in May 1781, the rebellion he had kindled fell south to present-day Bolivia and fought on furiously. Diego Cristobal succeeded his kinsman in authority, and with the (unrelated, but allied) Tupac Katari could briefly command vast territories that demanded bloody Spanish reconquest over hostile terrain. “Twenty years after these events,” one 19th century chronicle reports, “This writer saw the plains of Sicasica and Calamaca, for an extent of...

On this date in 1950, Milada Horakova was hanged with three others in Prague’s Pankrac Prison as a spy and traitor to the Communist Czechoslovakian government. Not (yet) as internationally recognizable as Rudolf Slansky,* the Communist General Secretary in Horakova’s time who would run afoul of Stalin and die on the same gallows two years later, Horakova (English Wikipedia page | Czech | the detailed French) is a potent symbol domestically of her country’s Cold War nightmare. Lawyer, social democrat, and a prominent feminist in the interwar and postwar periods — her life’s work, rather overshadowed by an end that...

The United States on Thursday urged Iran not to carry out the executions of three people involved in nationwide protests, with campaigners fearing that authorities will kill them imminently, AFP reported. State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel, echoing a statement last week by Amnesty International, voiced concern that Iran may soon execute Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi and Saeed Yaghoubi, who were arrested in November over protests in the central city of Isfahan. "We join the people of Iran and the international community in calling on Iran to not carry out these executions," Patel was quoted as having told reporters. "The...

...A hideous form of execution, which has not been practiced for twenty years, was revived the other day to strike terror into the hearts of the people. The murder of the Shah was followed by a succession of robberies on the road between Bushire and Isfahan, the nomad tribes going out in large parties and looting villages and caravans, and an Englishman was even stripped naked and beaten with sticks. One hundred thousand pounds was estimated as the value of property that changed hands during one week. Every day individuals came naked into Shiraz, and the roads were strewn with...

A woman who served time in prison for her involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection embraced former President Trump at a campaign rally in New Hampshire on Thursday before later saying that former Vice President Mike Pence and “every single” member of Congress who certified the 2020 election should be executed. After QAnon supporter Micki Larson-Olson was pointed out to Trump as a “Jan. 6-er” by the crowd at a packed diner, Trump sought her out, calling her “terrific,” telling her to “hang in there” and giving her a hug, video shows.