Capital Punishment

To New Mexico Atty. Gen. Gary King, a prison guard's slaying cried out for the death penalty: Inmates had stabbed him two dozen times. But when the defense ran out of money, the state Supreme Court ruled that King could not seek a death sentence until the lawyers were paid -- approximately $200,000 for each of the three defendants, King said. When state legislators refused to allocate more money, prosecutors dropped their pursuit of the death penalty.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his lawyers have switched strategies in the legal battle to resume executions, agreeing to submit revised lethal injection protocols for public review rather than continue appealing state court decisions that the redrafted rules are illegal. Although the move is intended to speed up a return of capital punishment, conservative law-and-order advocates and victims' rights groups expressed frustration over the persistent delays.

Corrections officials heard overwhelming condemnation of proposed new lethal injection procedures Tuesday at the first-ever public hearing on execution methods in the state. Contrary to the solid majority of Californians who in opinion polls expressed support for the death penalty, only two out of more than 100 speakers supported a resumption of death sentences once legal hurdles are cleared.

Executions and new death sentences continued their nationwide decline in 2008, as states wrestled with legal, moral and financial concerns about capital punishment. Thirty-seven people were executed in nine states, the lowest total in 14 years and a 62% drop from the 98 death sentences carried out in 1999, according to statistics compiled by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

In 10 years on China's highest court, Xuan Dong had a hand in the executions of 1,000 people -- most carried out by a bullet to the back of the head, often within weeks of the verdict. On his worst days, he considered himself a Communist Party hanging judge. Sitting on the Supreme People's Court, he represented the last hope of the condemned.

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 long appeals process, even after she moved from Philadelphia to suburban Ventura County.

A procession of legal experts declared Thursday that the state's manner of meting out the death penalty had become so bogged down and dogged by inequities that wholesale repair was needed. But during the first of three hearings by a state criminal justice commission there was little agreement on what would constitute the best fix.

Family members describe Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh as a frightened young man, sitting in a cramped Afghan prison cell alongside 30 hard-core criminals, hoping an apology will save him from execution for blasphemy. But to the outside world, the 23-year-old student and journalist has become a cause: a symbol of Afghanistan's clashing constitutional commitments to freedom of expression yet also to Islamic law that allows apostasy to be punished by death.

Three-quarters of California's elected district attorneys refused to disclose how they choose defendants to face the death penalty, according to a report slated for presentation at a public hearing in Los Angeles today. In a report to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, which is examining how the death penalty is applied in California, Pepperdine law school professors Harry M.

Defense lawyers and prosecutors agreed Wednesday that California's death penalty system was deeply troubled but split over the causes and solutions. During a hearing in Los Angeles before a state reform commission, prosecutors called for quicker appeals and amending the state Constitution to permit the California state Supreme Court to transfer some of the initial review of cases to state appeals courts. Defense attorneys opposed the proposal, saying it would make the process more cumbersome.