Free Republic

Nebraska has abolished the death penalty in a landmark veto-override vote backed by a coalition of conservatives who oppose capital punishment. North Platte Senator Mike Groene stood with 18 others as an advocate to keep the death penalty. But that just wasn't enough as 30 other senators decided to over ride Governor Pete Ricketts' veto and abolish the death penalty. He voted to keep the death penalty and uphold the governor's veto. "I believe in the death penalty in a civil society, we do not tolerate evil," Senator Groene said. State Senators voted 30-19 on Wednesday to override Gov. Pete...

Countless souls have made the spectral walk to the gallows, have heard the dusty rasp of death’s mournful eulogy whispered odiously from his pale throat, “dead man walking.” The condemned have been hung by the neck until dead, shot, poisoned, decapitated, stoned, or clapped in an iron skull cap while 10 thousand volts of electricity boil the life from flesh and bone. But, this is justice, when delivered by legitimate authority. This is the only atonement that can be made to expunge a crime so black and abhorrent that its presence distorts and tortures nature and its order. Capital punishment...

Complete Headline: Oklahoma legalizes execution by GAS CHAMBER: State will kill prisoners with 'foolproof, fast and painless' nitrogen if lethal injection isn't possible Oklahoma introduced a law allowing it to use nitrogen gas to kill death row prisoners if lethal injections aren't available. Governor Mary Fallin signed into law a bill approving nitrogen as an alternative method of death, giving Oklahoma four different ways to enact its death penalty. The method, which involves pumping a chamber full of nitrogen and leaving a prisoner's body to die from lack of oxygen, has been touted as 'foolproof' by supporters, in the wake...

It is a macabre choice to make - and almost unique to some inmates on Utah's death row: would you be injected with toxic chemicals, or shot in the heart? But, amid cries of outrage against the southwestern state bringing death by firing quad back into law, almost half of those due to die that way have picked the punishment themselves. Ron Lafferty, who slit the throats of his sister-in-law and her baby daughter in 1984, is one of three who has opted to die by the bullet. Two others in Utah's eight-strong death row have made the same choice,...

Why is it that we support clubs of people who think they can impose some unjust law upon the whole planet? How in the world is a collection of subsidized scolders, winers, and diners supposed to impose a worldwide moratorium on anything? Why does the Pope think they can? Pope Francis delivered a letter this week to the International Commission against the Death Penalty With these letters, I wish to have my greeting reach all the members of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, to the group of countries that support it, and to those who collaborate with the...

HUNTSVILLE — One of the infamous "Texas 7" fugitives was executed by lethal injection Wednesday night. Donald Newbury was put to death for his role in the murder of an Irving police officer on Christmas Eve in 2000. [Snip] He was serving 99 years in prison for robbery when he escaped from the Connally Unit in December 2000 with six other inmates. After committing more crimes in Houston they traveled to North Texas where they were caught robbing the Oshman's sporting goods store off Highway 183 in Irving. Dispatchers called Officer Aubrey Hawkins away from dinner with his young son...

Ohio will delay the executions of seven death row inmates while searching for an adequate supply of drugs that complies with its new execution protocol, the state's Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said Friday. That means the state will not carry out any executions in 2015, the agency said in a press release.

Oklahoma's last execution went so badly that the state tried to cancel it before it was over. With the inmate writhing while the lethal drugs seeped into his body, his executioners drew the viewing gallery curtains, concealing what the warden later described as "a bloody mess." The botched execution of Clayton Lockett in April and other troubling ones this year in Ohio and Arizona gave capital punishment opponents a flicker of hope that areas of the country that most enthusiastically support the death penalty might have a change of heart. They didn't.

Our nation is supposed to be a republic governed by laws- not men. Our elected officials are supposed to create and enforce the laws, not serve as the laws themselves. However, at a time when the mainstream media focuses on the pending corruption charges against Texas Governor Rick Perry for exercising his right to veto, they are deafeningly silent on the heinous and inexcusable corruption going on in Colorado as Democrat Governor John Hickenlooper threatens to commute the sentence of a convicted multi-murderer if he does not get re-elected. You may recognize the name as the name of the Democrat...

Richard McTear showed no emotion as the jury in his trial found him guilty on all counts, including first degree murder. Prosecutors say McTear threw his ex-girlfriend's 4-month-old boy out of a car while driving down I-275 in 2009. The jury also found him guilty of aggravated child abuse, kidnapping, assault and battery, and burglary. No date has been set for his sentencing. McTear is eligible for the death penalty.

Florida has executed a man who fatally stabbed his wife and her young son in 1985. It is the third U.S. execution in less than 24 hours since a botched April lethal injection in Oklahoma. The governor’s office says John Ruthell Henry was pronounced dead at 7:43 p.m. Wednesday. …

China's fast-track courts today sentenced 81 people, including 12 to death, and arrested 29 others in the restive Xinjiang province for terrorism-related crimes as part of a nationwide crackdown on Islamist militants blamed for a spate of recent attacks. While nine militants were sentenced to death, three others received death penalty with a two-year reprieve, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Besides the death penalties, local courts in six cities in Xinjiang convicted 69 others in 23 terrorism-related cases and pronounced sentences ranging from life imprisonment to fixed-term imprisonment, a regional higher people's court said. They were convicted for committing crimes...

In the wake of an execution that left a prisoner dying of a painful heart attack, Oklahoma is delaying lethal injection for another man so that the matter can be fully investigated. Oklahoma's attorney general today said that he'd put off the execution of convicted murderer and rapist Charles Warner so that the state can finish looking into what led to the botched execution of prisoner Clayton Lockett, The New York Times reports. The mix of drugs Lockett was given last week left him awake during the second and third rounds of chemicals designed to stop breathing and then the...

*** Oklahoma was using a new lethal injection drug for the first time, and the secrecy surrounding the drugs had caused a protracted argument that extended to the state’s courts and lawmakers. Branstetter had been there in January when Michael Wilson was killed with a three-drug mix that had been obtained from a compounding pharmacy. Wilson’s final words, spoken after the injections: “I feel my whole body burning.” So she wanted to go to see what was different this time. At the beginning, the only thing that was different was that the execution was late. At 6:23 p.m., 23 minutes...

At least 4.1% of all defendants sentenced to death in the US in the modern era are innocent, according to the first major study to attempt to calculate how often states get it wrong in their wielding of the ultimate punishment. A team of legal experts and statisticians from Michigan and Pennsylvania used the latest statistical techniques to produce a peer-reviewed estimate of the “dark figure” that lies behind the death penalty – how many of the more than 8,000 men and women who have been put on death row since the 1970s were falsely convicted. The team arrived at...

Oklahoma plans to hold its first double execution in nearly 80 years, Gov. Mary Fallin said Thursday. The move comes a day after the state Supreme Court removed one of the final obstacles, ruling late Wednesday that Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner are not entitled to know the source of the drugs that will be used to kill them. The inmates had sought that information through a civil lawsuit. "The defendants had their day in court. The court has made a decision," Gov. Mary Fallin said in a statement. "Two men that do not contest their guilt in heinous murders...

The death penalty is like gun rights in Texas politics: Candidates don’t dare get in the way of either. But Republican Greg Abbott, the favorite to succeed Gov. Rick Perry, must soon make a decision as attorney general that could disrupt the nation’s busiest death chamber. It’s an election-year dilemma for Abbott. But in Texas, it’s one that Democratic rival Wendy Davis can’t easily exploit, illustrating the difficulty of navigating the issue in such a pro-death penalty state. Abbott must soon decide whether to stick with his earlier opinions that Texas must disclose the source of the execution drugs it...

A Mississippi woman convicted of murdering her husband was granted at least a brief reprieve on Thursday but could still become the first female prisoner executed in the state in 70 years. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood had asked the state Supreme Court to set the execution of Michelle Byrom, 57, for Thursday night for the fatal shooting of her husband, Edward Byrom Sr. in 1999. But the court denied Hood's motion to carry out the execution, giving her attorneys hope the court will take up their motion to seek permission to file additional appeals.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The State Attorney General says Tennessee can lawfully use the electric chair on death row inmates if drugs used for lethal injection are not available. Attorney General Bob Cooper's written legal opinion was issued this week as state lawmakers consider a bill that would allow condemned prisoners to be electrocuted if lethal injection is thwarted by big drug companies or the courts.

The year was 1573, and 19-year-old Frantz Schmidt was beheading stray dogs in his back yard. He was not a troubled teenager in need of psychological attention. Frantz was practicing for his life's calling. Unlike teens today, Frantz didn't have to decide what he wanted to be when he grew up. Male teens followed in their fathers' footsteps. For Frantz, that meant becoming an executioner. It also meant having to live with enormous social stigma. Despite the shame, Frantz, a Lutheran, believed his executioner's role was divinely sanctioned. Martin Luther wrote that "the hand that wields the sword and strangles...