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

The first woman to be executed in the U.S. in five years has been put to death in Virginia for arranging the killings of her husband and a stepson over a $250,000 insurance payment.

Forty-one-year-old Teresa Lewis died by injection at 9:13 p.m. Thursday. She became the first woman executed in Virginia in nearly a century. Supporters and relatives of the victims watched her execution at Greensville Correctional Center.

A federal appeals court on Monday halted the execution of an inmate three weeks after problems with a lethal injection attempt.