Executions

CHICAGO (AP) — The Trump administration is planning an unprecedented five more federal executions before President-elect Joe Biden‘s inauguration, starting with a Texas street-gang member set to be put to death Thursday for his role in the 1999 slayings of an Iowa religious couple whose bodies he burned in the trunk of their car. Brandon […]

HOUSTON (AP) — Supporters of a Texas death row inmate who is facing lethal injection in less than two weeks for a murder he says he didn’t commit are mounting a final push in the courts and on social media to stop his execution, which is being called into question by lawmakers, pastors, celebrities and […]

JASPER, Texas (AP) — A technology company was almost ready to bring up to 300 new jobs to Jasper, Texas, but in the final stages of recent negotiations, a potential deal-breaker emerged: the community’s history as the place where three white men dragged a black man behind a pickup, killing him. The 1998 death of […]

If executions set for Alabama, Texas and Florida are carried out Thursday as scheduled, it would mark the first time in more than eight years that three convicted killers were put to death in the U.S. on the same day. According to statistics kept by the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, it is not […]

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Dallas man was executed Tuesday for the 1999 slaying of his ex-girlfriend while he already was on parole for killing his estranged wife. William Rayford, 64, became the nation’s second inmate put to death this year, both in Texas, when he received lethal injection for beating, stabbing and strangling 44-year-old […]

TAMARA LUSH, Associated Press STARKE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida inmate has been executed for fatally stabbing a prison guard with a sharpened spoon while on death row for abducting and killing a Miami couple. Askari Abdullah Muhammad, previously known as Thomas Knight, was pronounced dead at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday after a lethal injection at […]

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Texas marked a solemn moment in criminal justice Wednesday evening, executing its 500th inmate since it resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982. Kimberly McCarthy, who was put to death for the murder of her 71-year-old neighbor, was also the first woman executed in the U.S. in nearly three years. McCarthy, […]

Count on Florida to concoct laws that have nothing to do with justice, but much to do with political expediency. It’s been that way for a while. In 2010, under the pretense of preventing voter fraud, the GOP-led Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott limited early voting hours and imposed other inconveniences that led to block-long […]