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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,"...

A federal appeals court has turned down the appeal of a death row inmate who has chosen electrocution over lethal injection but now argues that electrocution is unconstitutional. Gary Bradford Cone was convicted in 1982 of bludgeoning to death an elderly Memphis couple -- Shipley and Cleopatra Todd -- while hiding out in their home on Evergreen near Poplar after robbing a jewelry store. The Sixth U.S. Court of Appeals has twice set aside Cone’s death sentence, once ruling that his trial lawyer was ineffective and then again after finding that the jury instructions were unconstitutionally vague. The U.S. Supreme...

A Contra Costa Superior Court judge on Friday sentenced a former Richmond man to death for raping and murdering an 8-year-old girl three decades ago. Joseph Cordova, 63, leaned on his elbows in a Martinez courtroom and showed no emotion as the judge condemned him to die for the 1979 killing of Cannie "Candy" Bullock. "At no point has Mr. Cordova evinced any remorse for the crime, not only denying that he perpetrated it in the face of all-but-conclusive DNA evidence to the contrary, but not even showing any sympathy for what happened to the child," Judge Peter Spinetta said...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A man convicted of killing a Memphis police officer in 1981 was executed early Wednesday after a court rejected defense pleas for more time to examine newly revised execution protocols. Philip Workman, whose execution had been delayed on five prior occasions, became Tennessee's third lethal injection since 2000. The Tennessee Supreme Court rejected a final defense request for more time to challenge the way the state carries out its three-chemical injection procedure. A federal judge halted Workman's execution last week over concerns about the revisions, but a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A little more than a week after revising its execution procedure manual, Tennessee was preparing Tuesday to carry out a lethal injection for only the third time in state history. Inmate Philip Workman, convicted of the 1981 shooting death of a Memphis police officer, is scheduled to die at 1 a.m. CDT Wednesday. Tennessee has executed two other prisoners in the past 47 years. Workman's execution was halted last week over concerns about the revised execution method, but a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted that temporary restraining order Monday. In a...

NASHVILLE — Death row inmate Philip Workman's execution is back on schedule after being halted last week over concerns about Tennessee's revised execution method. In an opinion issued Monday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati vacated a temporary restraining order handed down Friday by a U.S. District Court judge in Nashville. Workman's execution is scheduled for Wednesday at 1 a.m. CDT. In the 2-1 majority opinion, Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton wrote that Workman has come within days of being executed five previous times and never before challenged the state's three-drug lethal injection procedures. Workman's lawyers claimed that...

NASHVILLE — The state has asked a federal appeals court to lift a temporary restraining order that has delayed the execution of death row inmate Philip Workman set for this week. In a motion filed today with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, the state seeks an expedited action to overturn the order handed down Friday by a U.S. District Court judge in Nashville. The state is hoping to get the restraining order overturned and put Workman's execution, set for Wednesday, back on track. Attorney General Robert Cooper Jr. argues in the filing that the restraining order...

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (CNN) -- Philip Workman has prepared to die three times before. Next week, the convicted killer is prepared to face execution for a fourth time, to say goodbye to his daughter again, give away his belongings, and once again eat his final meal. And he'll wait to see if a court will again step in before the needle pierces his skin.

Tennessee is ready to resume executions under new rules it released Monday, using a three-drug lethal injection method opponents say is still inhumane and unconstitutional. Gov. Phil Bredesen will lift a 90-day moratorium on executions on Wednesday. Philip Workman, convicted of killing a Memphis police officer, is scheduled to die May 9. "It's essentially the same protocol as before, with a little window dressing," Nashville attorney Brad MacLean said. Among the complaints MacLean and other defense lawyers have about the execution method is the use of three chemicals to kill inmates. Last week a medical review of dozens of executions...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A paroled car and truck thief was executed Tuesday evening for a robbery and shooting that left two men dead a quarter-century ago outside Houston. When asked by the warden if he had anything to say, Donald Miller shook his head once. At 6:16 p.m., six minutes after the lethal dose began, he was pronounced dead.

A U.S. judge on Tuesday refused to block the execution of Saddam Hussein's former vice president, saying he had no jurisdiction to step into the case. U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman said agreeing to the motion brought by Taha Yassin Ramadan's lawyers would be tantamount to rejecting the verdict of an Iraqi trial court and accepting defense claims it was unfair. Ruling from the bench, he said Ramadan wanted to force the U.S. to overturn the court's decision. Attorneys have called the case a show trial with no legal foundation but said the U.S. has no jurisdiction to review...

CAIRO -- After Saddam Hussein's execution, a wave of sympathy and support for the former Iraqi dictator swept the Arab world, with some proclaiming him a martyr and comparing him to heroes of Arab nationalism. Praise for Saddam has only grown since his Dec. 30 hanging — when he answered insults and taunts with disdain — overshadowing the memories among many quarters of the atrocities committed by his regime. The independent Egyptian newspaper Al-Karama splashed Saddam's photo over a full page Monday, with an Iraqi flag behind him, declaring him an "Arab martyr." "He lived as hero, died as a...

BAGHDAD: When American soldiers woke Saddam Hussein in his cell near Baghdad airport at 3:55 a.m. last Saturday, they told him to dress for a journey to Baghdad. He had followed the routine dozens of times before, traveling by helicopter in the predawn darkness to the courtroom where he spent 14 months on trial for his life. When his cell lights were dimmed on Friday night, Hussein may have hoped that he would live a few days longer, and perhaps cheat the hangman altogether. According to Task Force 134, the American military unit responsible for all Iraqi detainees, Hussein "had...

WITHIN HOURS of Saddam Hussein's hanging, the drumbeat began -- as cable-news sages pronounced that the Iraqi scourge's execution will not improve the situation in Iraq. Or as Newsweek intoned: "Little is gained by Saddam's demise." These days, the first rule of war coverage is that nothing -- not even military victory -- will improve Iraq's prospects. The second rule is that everything is botched. So Hussein's trial was not fair, the appeals process was too swift and the execution was insufficiently solemn. In the 24-hour news cycle, you can kill your own citizens with impunity, subject them to starvation...

RICHMOND, Va. — The phone call Ida Reid had been fearing finally arrived on the evening of Sept. 9, 2004. "They're going to do it," her brother said. Her stomach churned. Her body shook. In a few hours, her brother would be dead. The clock in the kitchen of her Charlottesville home ticked down the final minutes. Just after 9 p.m., she clutched her mother and began to cry. In Virginia's death chamber, James Reid was receiving a lethal injection, his punishment for murdering an elderly woman. In her kitchen, a pain Ida couldn't explain had taken over, and it...

Some comments on the executing of Saddam Hussein: ___ "Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him, and there will be no review or delay in carrying out the sentence." — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. ___ Saddam's execution punishes "a crime with another crime. ... The death penalty is not a natural death. And no one can give death, not even the state." — Cardinal Renato Martino, Pope Benedict XVI's top prelate for justice issues. ___ "Today marks an important milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of...

Since it now seems very imminent, I decided that it was an appropriate time to start this up. Links to information and pictures (if we get them) can be posted here.

From today's Washington Times "Inside the Beltway"column: Kristinn Taylor, president of the local Free Republic chapter, was walking through the concourse of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday afternoon when he spotted one of Saddam Hussein's attorneys, Ramsey Clark, who was attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson. "As we walked by each other in the uncrowded terminal, I made a slashing motion across my neck and said to him, 'It's too bad about Saddam,' " in reference to the deposed Iraqi tyrant's failed judicial appeal to avert his death sentence. At that point, he said, Mr. Clark "glanced...

BAGHDAD -- Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer implored world leaders on Thursday to prevent the United States from handing over the ousted leader to Iraqi authorities for execution, saying the former dictator should enjoy protect from his enemies as a "prisoner of war." Iraq's highest court on Tuesday rejected Saddam's appeal against his conviction and death sentence for the killing of 148 Shiites in the northern city of Dujail in 1982. The court said the former president should be hanged within 30 days. "According to the international conventions it is forbidden to hand a prisoner of war to his adversary," Saddam's...

THE LATEST federal judge to rule against the constitutionality of a state's death penalty is U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who issued a ruling Friday that found California's lethal injection protocol to be "intolerable under the Constitution." Chalk up the ruling as a victory for Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for raping and murdering 17-year-old Terri Winchell of Lodi in 1981. Time is on his side. The decision was not your standard slam-dunk ruling against the death penalty. Fogel was careful to note that capital punishment is constitutional and that California's three-drug execution protocol "when properly administered will...

New Jersey prosecutors no longer have to prove a defendant is mentally fit to be executed, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. The decision shifts the burden of proving mental retardation to defendants trying to avoid death penalty, putting New Jersey in line with most other states. The ruling likely won't affect any of the state's nine death row inmates anytime soon. New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982 but has a moratorium on executions while a legislative panel evaluates capital cases. Its last execution was in 1963. Tuesday's decision stemmed from the case of Porfirio Jimenez, a Honduran...

California's method of executing prisoners by lethal injection will come under scrutiny this week, point by technical point -- how the executioners are trained, how the toxic chemicals are mixed, even how much light there is in the mixing room. The stakes, though, are anything but technical: the immediate future of executions in California, and perhaps in the nation. Starting Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose will hear arguments by lawyers both for the state and for a condemned murderer from Stockton about California's execution method. Witnesses -- guards, former wardens, execution observers and medical experts --...

Starke -- A convicted killer who argued that Florida's use of lethal injection amounted to cruel and unusual punishment was put to death Wednesday night after the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly denied him another stay. Clarence Hill, 48, was executed for the 1982 murder of a Pensacola police officer in a savings and loan robbery. He did not reply when asked if he had a last statement, staring straight at the ceiling. Hill had argued that the three chemicals used in Florida executions and by many other states — sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride — can cause excruciating...

San Francisco -- One of California's longest-serving death row inmates had his sentence overturned for the third time on Thursday after a federal appeals court ruled a defense lawyer failed to present evidence that could have kept his client from being condemned. Reversing a lower court, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said lawyer Arnold Lieman "rendered constitutionally defective assistance" by failing to tell jurors that Lavell Frierson had a history of mental retardation, child abuse, brain damage and drug use. "There is a reasonable probability that, had the jury been able to consider this evidence, the outcome of the...

CINCINNATI - Lawyers might be tempted to offer a weak defense in death-penalty cases because many execution sentences are being overturned because of attorney incompetence, the chief judge of a four-state federal appeals court said in an opinion released Monday. Prisoners who receive ineffective assistance are likely to be spared, "certainly for many years, and frequently forever," wrote Chief Judge Danny Boggs of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "To put it bluntly, it might well appear to a disinterested observer that the most incompetent and ineffective counsel that can be provided to a convicted and death-eligible defendant is...

Jarratt, Va. (AP) -- A man convicted of raping and murdering a 23-year-old woman was executed Thursday, becoming the first person in the United States to die in the electric chair in more than two years. Meanwhile, a child sex offender was executed in Texas for abducting and killing a 5-year-old girl. In Virginia, Brandon Hedrick, 27, was pronounced dead at the Greensville Correctional Center at 9:12 p.m. after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeals and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine denied his request for clemency. "I pray for the people that are unsaved," Hedrick said in his final words....

Sedley Alley finally executed for killing Marine Suzanne Collins.