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Maj Nidal Malik Hasan could become the first person to be sentenced to death by a military court in almost 50 years. The US Armed Forces has a death penalty – lethal injection – but there have been no executions since 1961 when an army private, John Bennett, was hanged for rape and attempted murder. The military can also impose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole and there are nine men on its death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. A "convening authority", a high-ranking officer, will decide whether the government will seek the death penalty. If so, it has...

LUCASVILLE, Ohio — A man who went on a 1992 Christmas holiday killing spree that left six people dead, including an 18-year-old mother gunned down at a pay phone, was executed Tuesday, the state's second execution in two weeks and the 1,000th lethal injection in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Cincinnati, OH (AHN) - The Ohio Supreme Court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled against staying the execution of an inmate because he is obese. The two courts upheld an earlier ruling of the U.S. The double murder convict argued that lethal injection might not be properly administered to him and might be painful and slow because his physical condition will make it difficult to find a vein where the lethal drug will be injected.

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court justices indicated Monday they are deeply divided over a challenge to the way most states execute prisoners by lethal injection, which critics say creates an avoidable risk of excruciating pain. With executions in the United States halted since late September, the court heard arguments in a case from Kentucky that calls into question the mix of three drugs used in most executions. Justice Antonin Scalia was among several conservatives on the court who suggested he would uphold Kentucky's method of execution and allow capital punishment to resume. States have been careful to adopt procedures that do...

China's executioners are planning to increase the use of lethal injections in order to make executions "more humane", a senior court official told the state media yesterday. Jiang Xingchang, vice-president of the supreme court, told the China Daily that lethal injections would eventually be used in all intermediate people's courts, instead of relying on firing squads. Lethal injections have already been used throughout China, particularly in high-profile cases such as the execution of gangsters and corrupt government officials. Human Rights Watch in China said that there were 1,770 known executions carried out in China in 2005, more than 80% of...

The Supreme Court will hear a case Monday that examines what is cruel and unusual punishment.When a state panel recommended in April that Tennessee abandon the three chemicals used in executions across the nation in favor of the single drug usually used in animal euthanasia, the state's corrections commissioner said no. Though the move would have simplified executions and eliminated the possibility of excruciating pain, the commissioner, George Little, said Tennessee should not be "out at the forefront" of a decision with "political ramifications." Little's decision helps illuminate one of the questions lurking behind the year's most eagerly anticipated death...

November 2, 2007 -- THE Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively halted U.S. executions via lethal injection until it can rule on a challenge to the constitutionality of a particular execution "cocktail." This is just the latest example of the whittling away of the death penalty - the courts have already cut executions by over a third since 1999.

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...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections in a case that could affect the way inmates are executed around the country. The high court will hear a challenge from two inmates on death row in Kentucky — Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. — who sued Kentucky in 2004, claiming lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Baze has been scheduled for execution Tuesday night, but the Kentucky Supreme Court halted the proceedings earlier this month. The U.S. Supreme Court has previously made it easier for death row inmates to...

Gov. Charlie Crist on Wednesday signed his first death warrant since taking office in January, ending a temporary halt on lethal injections that was imposed because of a botched execution last year. Mark Dean Schwab, 38, is scheduled to be executed Nov. 15, Crist said. Schwab was sentenced to death in 1992 for the kidnapping, rape and murder of 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez of Cocoa. He targeted the boy after seeing his picture in a newspaper. In December, then-Gov. Jeb Bush suspended all Florida executions after a medical examiner said that prison officials botched the insertion of the needles when convicted...

R obert Vinyard has been in jail and in prison for crimes related to stalking. Now he's in the state hospital for insane criminals. None of those institutions stopped him from stalking the woman he's hounded, harassed and threatened for nearly three decades. Vinyard, 52, has been stalking the same woman since 1979. They met while students at the University of Colorado. She befriended him because she felt sorry for him. They were never intimate partners. But he became obsessed with her. Two years ago, Vinyard was found by a judge to be not guilty by reason of insanity on...

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...

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) - Thirty years ago, Oklahoma Medical Examiner Dr. A. Jay Chapman marched into the Oklahoma Statehouse and dictated the formula for a cocktail of three drugs to a lawmaker looking for a more humane way to execute the condemned. As Chapman spoke, Rep. Bill Wiseman scribbled on a legal yellow pad. That afternoon, Wiseman introduced the bill that made Oklahoma the first state to adopt lethal injection. Chapman's method has since been taken up by 37 states in all, the federal government and the U.S. military and has been used to execute 900 U.S. prisoners. But...

DEATH PENALTY opponents will say anything, no matter how unbelievable, to stop an execution during the appeals process. There is no claim too bogus for some lawyers and activists -- and apparently no claim too bogus for some medical journals. Last month, a second medical journal printed an article that suggestesd lethal injection may routinely subject death-row inmates to agonizing pain before they die. In California, the three-drug lethal-injection protocol starts with 12.5 times the amount of sodium pentothal needed to begin invasive surgery, and is followed by lethal doses of two other drugs. The protocol is designed not to...

Inmates executed by lethal injection may in some cases die by "chemical asphyxiation" while conscious but unable to move, according to a new analysis of California and North Carolina executions released Monday. The study appearing in the online edition of PLoS Medicine -- a San Francisco-based medical journal -- was authored by the same team of doctors and death penalty opponents who raised similar concerns about the procedure in the British medical journal The Lancet in 2005. That earlier study, which said sub-potent amounts of the anesthetic sodium pentothal were found in the corpses of executed inmates, helped to propel...

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution of a man who had been scheduled to die Tuesday for killing a woman in 1991 and scattering her remains across two states. Inmate Kenneth Biros ? and the family of the victim, Tami Engstrom ? had waited for the decision more than six hours past his 10 a.m. scheduled execution time at Ohio's death house. The justices' one-sentence decision agreed with two lower courts that delayed the execution so he could continue arguing that Ohio's method of lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court...

'We can't understand why this has been put off this long,' victim's mother says. LIVINGSTON (TX) — Condemned Texas prisoner Ronald Chambers describes himself as "loaded with patience." Now in his fourth decade behind bars, Chambers' patience hasn't wavered, but time finally may be running out for Texas' longest-serving death row prisoner. It's been more than 11,300 days since Chambers arrived on death row on Jan. 8, 1976. Since then, 381 of his fellow prisoners have been executed. He's set to join them this week. "I knew it was coming," Chambers, 52, said of the letter he recently received notifying...

State officials said Tuesday they would submit revised lethal injection procedures to a federal judge by May 15 in an attempt to revive California's death penalty. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled last month that the state's execution protocol was unconstitutional because it could result in condemned inmates feeling excruciating or unnecessary pain. But he gave the state the opportunity to try to fix the procedures. Fogel said executioners were poorly trained, worked in dim, cramped quarters and failed to properly mix the lethal, three-drug cocktail used to kill condemned inmates. The judge said there was substantial evidence that the...

A federal judge ruled Friday that California's lethal injection methods are unconstitutional but can be fixed if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is willing to cooperate. The records of previous executions expose "actions and failures to act" that have created a risk of cruel and unusual punishment, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose wrote in a 17-page opinion. "This is intolerable" under the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment, Fogel declared. There will be no executions in California while the case is pending. "It sounds like the judge is saying, 'You've made progress, but you're not there yet,' " Stanford law professor...

MIAMI, Dec. 15 -- Executions by lethal injection were suspended in Florida and ordered revamped in California on Friday, as the chemical method once billed as a more humane way of killing the condemned came under mounting scrutiny over the pain it may cause. Gov. Jeb Bush (R) ordered the suspension in Florida after a botched execution in which it took 34 minutes and a second injection to kill convicted murderer Angel Nieves Diaz. A state medical examiner said that needles used to carry the poison had passed through the prisoner's veins and delivered the three-chemical mix into the tissues...

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge who imposed a moratorium on executions in California ruled Friday that the state's method of lethal injection is unconstitutional because it violates the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. California's "implementation of lethal injection is broken, but it can be fixed," U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel said. Fogel said the case raised the question of whether a three-drug cocktail administered by the San Quentin State Prison is so painful that it "offends" the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Fogel said he was compelled "to answer that question in the affirmative." Fogel's...

Medical logs of past state executions showed that some patients might have been conscious during the lethal injection procedure because the sedatives were mixed by prison staffers with no medical background, an anesthesiologist testified Wednesday. Dr. Mark Heath of Columbia University also testified that records from San Quentin State Prison executions show that some of the drugs taken from the prison pharmacy that weren't used went missing. "For each execution, there's 15 vials missing," Heath said during the second day of court hearings challenging California's lethal injection method. He added, "There were errors in mixing drugs." The hearing was called...

RICHMOND, Va. -- A killer scheduled to be electrocuted Thursday may have chosen to die in the electric chair because he feared lethal injection, his attorney said.

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 ~

DALLAS — A Naval chief petty officer home on leave from the Middle East was shot and killed by a carjacker just three days before he was to report back for duty. Kameron Pratt, scheduled to return after minor shoulder surgery, was shot by an unidentified carjacker who dragged him from his pickup truck at his parents' home in Dallas on Friday night. Pratt, 34, stumbled to the porch. His brother, Keanon, found him semiconscious, dialed 911 and performed CPR. Paramedics transported Pratt to the hospital but he died shortly after arrival. The chief petty officer had been savoring two...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday declined to decide whether a drug combination used to execute convicted murderers violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The justices refused to hear the appeal by a Tennessee death row inmate who said one of the drugs may inflict inhumane pain and that 30 states, including his, have banned using it for the euthanasia of animals. The high court at the end of April heard arguments in a similar case from Florida on whether death row inmates can bring a last-minute challenge to the lethal injection method under...

The Supreme Court's refusal Monday to consider a second lethal injection case suggests the justices are not ready to decide whether the drugs amount to cruel and unusual punishment, legal experts said. The denial was issued without comment, leaving court watchers to speculate over justices' reasons for rejecting an appeal by a Tennessee death-row inmate who claims lethal injection is unconstitutional. "The Supreme Court is plainly not ready to step into the lethal injection controversy yet," said Eric M. Freedman, a Hofstra University law professor. "It's kind of a puzzle," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal...

NASHVILLE — Death row inmate Sedley Alley received a stay of execution Thursday from a federal judge. Alley was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday for the 1985 rape and murder of 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Suzanne M. Collins at the Millington Naval Air Station outside Memphis. Federal Judge Aleta Traugher issued the stay because for Alley, who is challenging the state’s lethal injection procedure. A ruling on whether the drugs used in lethal injection violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court.

SAN FRANCISCO - Federal court hearings on the constitutionality of California's three-drug execution cocktail were postponed Thursday as attorneys for a condemned inmate and state prosecutors haggle over pretrial issues. The case concerns Michael Morales, who is on death row for killing 17-year-old Terri Winchell of Stockton 25 years ago. As Morales' February 21 execution approached, his attorneys filed a lawsuit with U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel arguing that Morales might feel too much pain if the sedative he was given did not make him unconscious before two other drugs were administered - one to paralyze him and another to...

Supreme Court justices clashed on Wednesday over how states execute killers, with one court member saying current lethal-injection drugs would not be used on cats and dogs and a second arguing that executions do not have to be pain-free. The court blocked Florida, at the last minute, from executing Clarence Hill in January, as Hill lay on a gurney with IV lines in his arms. The justices took up his case with a lively and sometimes contentious discussion about the way states carry out capital punishment. The court's ruling will determine whether inmates can file last-minute civil rights challenges claiming...

Judges in several states have started to put up potentially insurmountable roadblocks to the use of lethal injections to execute condemned inmates. Their decisions are based on new evidence suggesting that prisoners have endured agonizing executions. In response, judges are insisting that doctors take an active role in supervising executions, even though the American Medical Association's code of ethics prohibits that. A federal judge in North Carolina, for instance, ordered state officials there to find medical personnel by noon today to supervise an execution scheduled for next week. Otherwise, the judge said, he will impose a stay of execution. "This,...

Highest Md. court to hear lethal injection challenge, claim that race had roleMaryland's highest court halted Monday the scheduled execution of convicted murderer Vernon Lee Evans Jr., agreeing to hear his challenge to the state's lethal injection procedure, along with claims that race has played a role in his case The Maryland Court of Appeals issued its orders on the first of five days when a death warrant authorized the state to put Evans to death for the 1983 contract killings of two Pikesville motel employees.

The American Civil Liberties Union claimed in a federal lawsuit Wednesday that California's lethal injection protocol violates the First Amendment rights of execution witnesses by not allowing them to see if the inmate is experiencing pain before death. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, says the only reason San Quentin State Prison officials inject a paralyzing agent is to sanitize the execution and prevent witnesses from perhaps seeing convulsions. The paralyzing drug, according to the lawsuit, "makes it impossible for witnesses to determine whether death row inmates in California are being subjected to substantial and unnecessary...

A decade ago, when Washington lawmakers made lethal injection the primary way to execute convicted killers, it was considered less barbaric than hanging and less likely to bring long, costly appeals. The state Supreme Court has called lethal injection "undoubtedly constitutional" and said that ruling otherwise would be "tantamount to forbidding the death penalty altogether." But now, as death row inmates in other states claim it's cruel punishment because it may not bring a peaceful death as once believed, some attorneys say Washington courts will likely have to take another look at the method. "There's no doubt it will come...

The state of California has proposed altering the amount of life-ending drugs to be used in executions and would continually drip a sedative into prisoners to make sure they don't become conscious during the process, prosecutors said Friday. California's chief death penalty prosecutor, Dane Gillette, said at a hearing that the changes would ensure that a prisoner "would not experience wanton or unnecessary pain." U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel didn't say whether he would approve of the new method. The proposal responds to a lawsuit brought by Michael Morales, who was scheduled to be executed Feb. 21. The injection was...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court refused Monday to directly consider whether the drug combination used in executions across the country amounts to unconstitutional cruel punishment. The justices had already agreed to hear arguments in April in a case brought by Florida death row inmate Clarence Hill about the procedure for lethal injection challenges to be filed in federal court. Monday's decision, which came on a separate appeal by Hill's lawyer, has little practical significance because Hill's other case is still pending. The justices did not comment when they declined to broaden their review and take up Hill's appeal that raised...

Michael Morales is a death row inmate in California scheduled to die on February 21st. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel has ruled that an anesthesiologist must ensure that Mr. Morales is unconscious before the paralyzing agent and heart-stopping drug can be administered. Fogel said he would block the execution otherwise to "guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment, which is banned by the Constitution." How very considerate. Do you know why Mr. Morales is on death row? Let me tell you

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States is taking a new look at the use of lethal injections to execute condemned prisoners after the challenges of three inmates who were barely saved from the needle by the Supreme Court. The justices will not reopen the cases of Michael Taylor, a rapist and killer who was due to be executed in Missouri on Wednesday, or Clarence Hill and Arthur Rutherford, two convicted killers in Florida who have also had their executions stayed over the past eight days. But the highest US court will decide whether the three can challenge the use of...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court has triggered a debate over the mix of drugs used to carry out death sentences, with the justices delaying three executions and giving hope of eleventh-hour reprieves to other inmates. Florida and Missouri were forced to cancel executions by lethal injection this week. Prisoners in California, Maryland and other states are trying to win stays this month. An announcement from the high court last week is giving new hope for their appeals. The justices will consider whether a Florida inmate was wrongly barred from pursuing a claim that the lethal drugs cause pain in...

Ailing killer executed at age 76 Condemned for 3 slayings, Allen is oldest ever put to death in state Clarence Ray Allen, a twice-convicted murderer enfeebled by age and illness after more than two decades on Death Row, was executed by lethal injection early today at San Quentin State Prison for ordering three killings from his prison cell in 1980. Allen, who turned 76 on Monday, was pronounced dead about 12:38 a.m. He is the oldest prisoner ever executed in California and one of the oldest ever put to death in the United States. His last hope was extinguished Monday...

Lethal journey draws to a close By John Simerman CONTRA COSTA TIMES Stanley "Tookie" Williams will spend most of his remaining daytime hours with visitors inside a Plexiglas cubicle, wearing waist restraints and handcuffs and under constant watch. About 6 p.m., a special security team will escort him from North Segregation, the original death row, to an annex building, and one of two "death watch cells" adjacent to the green execution chamber. There, he can watch TV or listen to the radio, possibly tuning in as supporters gather for a mass vigil expected outside the prison's East Gate. The Crips...

JOHN AND KEN on KFI live from San Quentin -- OFFICIAL TOOKIE WILLIAMS countdown thread KFI's John and Ken begin their special broadcast from San Quentin today at 3pm Pacific. KFI will broadcast the event until 1am on Tuesday morning. If this monster really cares about kids, he will admit what he did, apologize to the families, apologize to supporters of whom he has made fools, and tell kids this is how they will end up if they take someone's life. 3PM PACIFIC - listen online to John and Ken broadcasting from outside San Quentin ***TOOKIE COUNTDOWN CLOCK*** SAN QUENTIN...

You'd die for a table at the most exclusive diner in all California LA Notebook by Chris Ayres THE MOST exclusive restaurant in California is located a few miles north of San Francisco and has been in business since 1852. It is exclusive because patrons can request in advance exactly what they want to eat, thus avoiding the inconvenience of a menu, and because it has served only seven customers — yes, seven — in the past decade. There is, however, one significant downside to the cachet of eating at this establishment: the after-dinner cocktail is served in a syringe,...

CBSNEWS.COM Los Angeles Dec. 11, 2005 (AP) A lawyer for convicted murderer Stanley Tookie Williams asked the state Supreme Court to stay his execution, saying the Crips gang co-founder should have been allowed to argue that someone else killed one of his four alleged victims. Attorney Verna Wefald filed a petition Saturday challenging the validity of the four convictions and death sentences given in 1981 to Williams, who is scheduled to die Tuesday at San Quentin State Prison. She also filed an emergency request seeking a stay, the Los Angeles Times reported. Williams' lawyers also have asked Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger...

LISTEN ONLINE TO JOHN AND KEN - KFI 640 at 5pm Pacific If things go as planned, the TOOKIE MUST DIE HOUR shows are dwindling down to the final few -- today's show, a Monday show, and then a celebratory show on Tuesday after the big event.

Former War Crimes Prosecutor & Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues, Pierre Prosper, releases statement regarding the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. A former prosecutor in Los Angeles County, Prosper offers support for the jury and the Los Angeles District Attorney. Los Angeles (PRWEB) December 9, 2005 -- From the office of the Prosper for Attorney General Campaign, the following statement from former United States Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues, Pierre-Richard Prosper, was released on Thursday, December 8, 2005. "Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is holding clemency review for the co-founder of the infamous Crips street gang and convicted...

JOIN THE FUN - 5pm PACIFIC KFI 640: LISTEN ONLINE TO JOHN AND KEN'S FAMOUS "TOOKIE MUST DIE HOUR" -- 5pm Pacific Yes, Tookie Williams no longer needs to worry about expiration dates on dairy products. I don't believe he will do it, but if Arnold grants clemency, look for Saddam Hussein to start writing children's books.

LISTEN TO JOHN AND KEN ONLINE AT 5PM PACIFIC --- THE FAMOUS "TOOKIE MUST DIE HOUR" The "community" is really upset with John and Ken and their TOOKIE MUST DIE HOUR. It is driving them absolutely insane. John and Ken will broadcast their show on Dec. 12 from outside San Quentin. I understand that John Ziegler will be there. Zig has the 7-10 shift. Unfortunately, George Noory is on KFI at 10pm. I doubt that he will broadcast the execution on COAST TO COAST. That's okay. Maybe he can have on Major Ed Dames to remote view or a...

Candlelight Vigil Today for Williams LOS ANGELES - Activists seeking clemency for convicted killer and Crips gang co-founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams will hold a candlelight vigil today in front of the restaurant founded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger has scheduled a private clemency hearing Thursday with Williams' lawyers and prosecutors. The rally will be held at Schatzi on Main in Santa Monica, according to Danielle Heck of the Save Tookie Committee-LA. Schwarzenegger no longer owns the restaurant. Yesterday, a rally was held in Leimert Park to urge Schwarzenegger to grant clemency to Williams, who is scheduled to be executed Dec....

NOTE: More than 600 death row inmates who had been sentenced to death between 1967 and 1972 had their death sentences lifted as a result of Furman, but the numbers quickly began to build up again as states enacted revised legislation tailored to satisfy the Supreme Court's objections to arbitrary imposition of death sentences. The first execution under the new death penalty laws took place on January 17, 1977, when convicted murdered Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah. Gilmore's was the first execution in the United States since 1967. After Gilmore, 998 more have been executed. Tookie...