Execution | featured news

The attorney for an Ohio death-row inmate set for execution says the condemned man is sorry for killing two strangers 23 years ago and wants to give their families justice.

Attorneys for a 486-pound Ohio death row inmate claim that the execution procedure "simply will not work" on their client and will cause him a "torturous and lingering death." Ronald Post, 53, was sentenced to death in 1985 for the shooting death of Helen Vantz, a desk clerk at a motel in Elyria, Ohio.

Texas prison officials say they’re stopping the practice of special last meals for inmates facing execution, after a state senator complained about an extensive request from a man involved in a notorious dragging death. Sen. John Whitmire said Thursday he wanted the “ridiculous” and “inappropriate” practice ended or he’d seek a state statute banning it. Prisons director Brad Livingston agreed and said the practice was ending immediately. He said condemned inmates will get the same meal as other offenders.

Troy Davis is executed in Georgia for the shooting of a policeman in 1989, after his final appeal was rejected by the US Supreme Court.

Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed in Georgia at 7 p.m. in the killing of a Savannah police officer 22 years ago.

Hundreds of thousands of people are rallying to support Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis. They not only oppose capital punishment but they also believe the state could put an innocent man to death. The case is packed with drama: the murder of an off-duty police officer; conflicting eyewitness testimony; last-minute court decisions sparing a condemned man's life and global dignitaries who say they fear an innocent man could die.

A Virginia man who raped and suffocated an 88-year-old widow has become the state's first inmate executed using a new drug cocktail. Thirty-year-old Jerry Terrell Jackson was executed by lethal injection at 9:14 p.m. Thursday at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. Jackson was sentenced to death for the August 2001 rape and murder of Ruth Phillips in her Williamsburg apartment.

A convicted ax murderer, on Delaware's death row for some 18 years, was executed on Friday at the state prison in Smyrna.

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak could be executed if he is convicted of ordering the killing of protesters, Egypt's justice minister said Wednesday.

An Iranian woman whose sentence of execution by stoning for adultery provoked a worldwide outcry will instead be hanged for murder on Wednesday, a human rights group said.