Lethal Injection

The state's method of execution is unconstitutional because two of the three drugs it uses for lethal injection can cause "an agonizing and painful death," a judge ruled. Executioners must stop using the three-drug combination and use a single anesthetic drug because state law requires a painless death, the judge ruled in Elyria. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lethal injection procedure in Kentucky, which uses the same three drugs as Ohio.

A man who admitted killing two women and four girls is scheduled to be executed Thursday after spending almost 29 years in a Florida prison. David Alan Gore on Thursday met with his mother and an ex-wife and is scheduled to be put to death at 6 p.m. EDT. Gore, now 58, had confessed to killing four teenage girls and two women in the 1980s in the eastern Florida town of Vero Beach, but was condemned to death for killing 17-year-old Lynn Elliott....

A man who admitted killing two women and four girls is scheduled to be executed Thursday after spending almost 29 years in a Florida prison. David Alan Gore on Thursday met with his mother and an ex-wife and is scheduled to be put to death at 6 p.m. EDT. Gore, now 58, had confessed to killing four teenage girls and two women in the 1980s in the eastern Florida town of Vero Beach, but was condemned to death for killing 17-year-old Lynn Elliott....

A murderer  executed Thursday for killing a teenage girl almost 30 years ago apologized to her family before he died. “I would like to say to Mr. and Mrs. Elliott that I am truly sorry for my part in the death of your daughter,” David Alan Gore said before receiving a lethal injection, according to an email from Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff. “I wish above all else my death could bring her back … I am not the same man today that I was 28 years ago.” Gore, 58, admitted he killed two women and four girls in the 1980s in the eastern Florida town of Vero Beach.

Attorneys for the state of California and death row prisoners have agreed to a timetable for reviewing new lethal injection procedures, effectively postponing any such executions for another year. State attorneys representing prison authorities and lawyers for four of the 12 death row inmates who have exhausted their appeals and are eligible for death warrants filed papers Thursday with the San Francisco federal judge newly assigned to the complex and protracted case. The papers set a Sept.

State officials launched a two-month forum Friday for public comment on revised lethal injection procedures in a step toward resuming executions as early as next year. But the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation warned in posting the new protocols that it will weigh comments only on the execution process, not on the legality or morality of the death penalty.

A judge on Friday threw out California's new lethal injection protocols, which have been five years in the making, because corrections officials failed to consider a one-drug execution method now in practice in other death penalty states. In ruling that the new protocols were "invalid," Marin County Superior Court Judge Faye D'Opal noted that one of the state's own experts recommended the single injection method as being superior to the three-drug sequence approved last year. State officials now must decide whether to appeal D'Opal's ruling or again revise the lethal injection procedures that were deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2006.

A federal judge ruled in Nashville that the state's new lethal injection procedures are cruel and unusual punishment, blocking an execution next week. The protocol "presents a substantial risk of unnecessary pain" and violates death row inmate Edward Jerome Harbison's constitutional protections under the 8th Amendment, U.S. District Judge Aleta Arthur Trauger ruled.

Re "Concerns About Pain Put Lethal Injection on Trial," April 24 Human Rights Watch is absolutely correct that lethal injection is inhumane. However, its reasoning is wrong. Lethal injection is inhumane because it lets the murderer off too easily. There really is only one fair and just method of capital punishment, and that is for the murderer to be put to death in exactly the same manner in which he or she did in the victim. If murderers are to be shown mercy when they are executed, then the least they could do is show mercy to their victims.

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.

Back in September, much was made of the crowd's reaction at a GOP presidential debate after moderator Brian Williams noted that Texas Gov. Rick Perry had overseen more executions than any governor in modern times, and spectators burst into applause. Liberal pundits saw this as an example of the callousness of GOP voters, but we were more disturbed by the callousness on exhibit from Perry. "I've never struggled with that at all," Perry said. Why not? Perry oversaw the execution of a man who may well have been innocent, then quashed an investigation of the matter; most people in such a situation would, we suspect, experience at least a twinge of conscience.

A judge on Friday threw out California's new lethal injection protocols, which have been five years in the making, because corrections officials failed to consider a one-drug execution method now in practice in other death penalty states. In ruling that the new protocols were "invalid," Marin County Superior Court Judge Faye D'Opal noted that one of the state's own experts recommended the single injection method as being superior to the three-drug sequence approved last year. State officials now must decide whether to appeal D'Opal's ruling or again revise the lethal injection procedures that were deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2006.

Attorneys for the state of California and death row prisoners have agreed to a timetable for reviewing new lethal injection procedures, effectively postponing any such executions for another year. State attorneys representing prison authorities and lawyers for four of the 12 death row inmates who have exhausted their appeals and are eligible for death warrants filed papers Thursday with the San Francisco federal judge newly assigned to the complex and protracted case. The papers set a Sept.

Unless there is a last-minute stay, Troy Anthony Davis will die Wednesday by lethal injection, raising the distinct possibility that the state of Georgia will have executed an innocent man. His is perhaps the highest-profile death penalty case in the country, attracting the attention of such public figures as former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI and former FBI Director William Sessions, all of whom have called for clemency, as...

The federal judge who five years ago halted executions in California is leaving the San Jose bench, the state — and most likely a contentious death penalty case — for a new job in Washington. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel on Friday was named to direct the Federal Judicial Center and will be moving to the nation's capital in October, long before any resolution in the protracted legal challenge to lethal injection can be expected. Fogel said he has neither ruled out taking the case with him to the largely academic post as center director, nor determined whether that is an option under the judiciary's rules.

He was known as Dr. Death, a Michigan physician who helped his patients kill themselves. In doing so, Jack Kevorkian inflamed a nationwide debate in the 1990s over a terminally ill patient's right to die. And he served eight years in prison for second-degree murder for administering the lethal injection rather than helping the patient do it himself. Kevorkian began his crusade mindful of his own mortality. "You don't know what will happen when you get older," he said in a 1998 interview with "60 Minutes.

Jared Lee Loughner surfed the Internet for information on lethal injection and assassins in the hours before the Tucson shooting rampage, computer information that prosecutors are likely to use as evidence to show he was not mentally incompetent, a federal law enforcement official said Thursday. Loughner pleaded not guilty Monday in federal court to attempted-murder charges in the shootings of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and two of her aides. Six people were killed, including a federal judge, and 13 were wounded in the Jan. 8 attack.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the assisted-suicide activist who came to be known as "Dr. Death," died early Friday in an intensive care unit at a Michigan hospital.  He was 83 years old, and suffered a pulmonary thrombosis while hospitalized for kidney problems and pneumonia. Kevorkian's illness was relatively brief, and assisted suicide apparently was not a factor.  But the former pathologist aided at least 130 people in bringing an end to their lives -- including victims of debilitating and incurable diseases like Alzheimer's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease)

New legal challenges threaten to further delay California's effort to resume executions despite five years of costly reforms and reconstruction to meet a federal judge's concerns that previous procedures might have inflicted cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel on Tuesday toured San Quentin State Prison's new $900,000 execution facility, questioning state corrections authorities about the death penalty machinery and methods revised to address the concerns that led him to halt executions in 2006.