death row

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First Execution of a US Woman in 67 Years Halted

Judge grants stay of execution for Lisa Montgomery

(Newser) - A judge has granted a stay in what was slated to be the US government's first execution of a female inmate in nearly seven decades—a Kansas woman who killed an expectant mother in Missouri, cut the baby from her womb, and passed off the newborn as her own,...

Attorneys for Woman Set to Be Executed Ask Trump to Intervene

Commute Lisa Montgomery's sentence, her lawyers ask POTUS

(Newser) - The only woman on federal death row is set to be executed Tuesday—but her lawyers are hoping the president will intervene. Lisa Montgomery's defense team filed a petition for clemency Tuesday, USA Today reports. "We're asking now that President Trump to please hear our plea,"...

Bad News for Only Woman on Federal Death Row

Lisa Montgomery could now be executed before Joe Biden takes office

(Newser) - A federal appeals court has cleared the way for the only woman on federal death row to be executed before President-elect Joe Biden takes office, the AP reports. The ruling, handed down Friday by a three-judge panel on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, concluded...

Good News for Only Woman on Death Row

Judge rules Lisa Montgomery's execution was set illegally, might get pushed to Biden administration

(Newser) - A federal judge said the Justice Department unlawfully rescheduled the execution of the only woman on federal death row, potentially setting up the Trump administration to schedule the execution after president-elect Joe Biden takes office. US District Court Judge Randolph Moss also vacated an order from the director of the...

Dustin Higgs Asks Trump Not to Put Him to Death

His lawyers call the sentencing 'arbitrary and inequitable'

(Newser) - A federal death row inmate who is due to die on Jan. 15 has petitioned President Trump for clemency. The Guardian explains the case Dustin Higgs is trying to make: Essentially that it was "arbitrary and inequitable" to sentence the man who murdered three woman who had been abducted...

Lawyer: Client's Execution Delay 'Unprecedented'

SC officials say they can't obtain drugs needed to put Richard Bernard Moore to death by Friday

(Newser) - South Carolina prison officials say they have to delay an execution scheduled for Friday because they won't be able to obtain the necessary lethal injection drugs. An attorney for the state Department of Corrections wrote in a letter to the South Carolina Supreme Court last week that the agency...

Death Row Inmates Scam State Pandemic Benefits

They were among thousands of prisoners illegally receiving California benefits

(Newser) - Authorities in California say they've uncovered the "most significant fraud on taxpayer funds" in state history—and most of the perpetrators are already behind bars. Nine district attorneys and a federal prosecutor said Tuesday that tens of thousands of prisoners, including many on death row, had scammed the...

Lawyers for Death Row Inmate: We Got COVID Due to Bill Barr

Lisa Montgomery's attorneys: Surprise execution date set during pandemic forced us to travel

(Newser) - Two attorneys for a female death-row inmate are blasting Attorney General Bill Barr, saying they contracted COVID-19 because he "recklessly" put their client's execution on the calendar for next month, all while the pandemic is still raging. In a lawsuit filed on behalf of Lisa Montgomery against the...

Feds to Execute a Woman for First Time Since 1953

Lisa Montgomery is set to die on Dec. 8

(Newser) - There is a single woman on federal death row, and her execution date has now been scheduled. If Lisa Montgomery is put to death on Dec. 8 as planned, she'll be the first woman executed by the feds since 1953. The New York Times reports the Kansas woman was...

Feds Execute Man Who Thought He Killed 'Tinkerbell'

That was the name William LeCroy used for a former sitter who he thought put a hex on him

(Newser) - The US government on Tuesday executed a former soldier who said an obsession with witchcraft led him to kill a Georgia nurse he believed had put a spell on him. William Emmett LeCroy, 50, was pronounced dead at 9:06pm EDT after receiving a lethal injection at the same US...

They Were Put to Death. There Was Something Off With Their Lungs

NPR looked at 216 death-row inmate autopsies

(Newser) - It's impossible to ask a death row inmate whether they're suffering as they are being put to death by lethal injection. The typical three-drug cocktail first anesthetizes them (rendering them unconscious) and then paralyzes them before stopping their heart. But it turns out their bodies can tell us....

This Man Will Die Tonight Against a Government's Wishes

The Navajo Nation has been opposed to the death penalty for Lezmond Mitchell from the start

(Newser) - After a 17-year pause, federal executions resumed this summer, with three men put to death. A fourth man on federal death row is slated to experience the same fate tonight in Terre Haute, Ind., but that fate is one a government—the Navajo government—has vehemently opposed. That's because...

Lawyers: Federal Inmate Is Mentally Unfit for Execution

DC judge halts plan to execute Wesley Purkey

(Newser) - A Washington, DC judge has halted plans to execute a second federal inmate in two days. Wesley Ira Purkey, 68, was scheduled to be executed at 4pm Wednesday for the 1998 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 16-year-old Jennifer Long. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued an injunction Wednesday morning blocking...

First Federal Execution in 17 Years Is Delayed Again

Judge says legal issues haven't been resolved

(Newser) - A US district judge on Monday ordered a new delay in federal executions, hours before the first lethal injection was scheduled to be carried out at a federal prison in Indiana, per the AP . The administration is certain to ask a higher court to allow the executions to move forward....

Lawyer of Newly Free Death Row Inmate: 'He Is Very Tired'

Walter Ogrod released after prosecutors decide he likely didn't kill 4-year-old Philly girl

(Newser) - A man who spent nearly three decades behind bars, most of them on death row, after he was convicted at his second trial of killing a 4-year-old girl in Philadelphia was released Friday after prosecutors concluded he very likely didn't do it. Walter Ogrod left death row and the...

The People Trying to Halt His Execution Are Unexpected

Among them: the daughter of one of the people Nick Sutton murdered

(Newser) - Death row inmate Nick Sutton has an unusual group of supporters seeking to block his scheduled execution Thursday. Among them are family members of his victims, as well as past and present prison workers calling for clemency. Sutton, 58, was sentenced to death in 1986 for killing fellow inmate Carl...

In Rare Move, Japan Hangs a Foreigner

Wei Wei was convicted of the 2003 murders of a family of 4

(Newser) - "It was an extremely cold-blooded and cruel case, in which (Wei) killed four innocent members of a happy family," said Japan's justice minister in announcing a rare move: the execution of a foreigner. The AP reports Wei Wei's Thursday death by hanging was the first time...

Killer of 5 Teens Dies in Prison
'Tool Box Killer' Dies in Prison
Dec 16, 2019 6:15 PM CST

'Tool Box Killer' Dies in Prison

California death row inmate murdered 5 teenagers

(Newser) - Lawrence Sigmond Bittaker, one of the “Tool Box Killers" who preyed on teenage girls in Southern California 40 years ago, has died of natural causes, state corrections officials said Monday. Bittaker and accomplice Roy Lewis Norris kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered five girls in 1979. Their nickname came from...

Tennessee Nears Execution of Blind Convict, a Rarity

As inmates age on death row, an expert says, health problems increase

(Newser) - The execution of a blind man in Tennessee this week would mark only the second time in recent decades that a person without vision has been put to death in the US, the death row inmate's lawyers say. Lee Hall, 53, is scheduled to be electrocuted Thursday in a...

Man Nearing Execution by Firing Squad Has Died

Ron Lafferty's murder case was featured in Jon Krakauer's 'Under the Banner of Heaven'

(Newser) - A Utah death-row inmate whose double-murder case was featured in the book Under the Banner of Heaven and who was nearing execution by firing squad has died of natural causes, prison officials said Monday. Ron Lafferty, 78, died at the state prison in the Salt Lake City suburb of Draper,...

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