quote: As my eyes traveled down Gardner's left arm, past his dark blue jumpsuit, I saw his pale white skin appear below his elbow. Half a faded blue tattoo, some kind of diamond shape, stuck out from the restraint around his wrist.
Reading from a rambling hand-written statement, Garner said he was "heartily sorry ... my carelessness caused a great lost (sic) to many and if my flesh gives you all some kind of peace, I want that for you." He thanked a long list of people, including the state of Ohio, then said, "I'm free, thank God almighty, I'm free now."
The article indicates that a single chemical execution (if that is what it was) might not be as efficacious as the three-part cocktail. Perhaps the move adopted by some states from three drugs to a single drug was precipitate.
Posts: 444 | Location: Austin, Texas, USA | Registered: January 06, 2010
Derrick Jackson was executed this evening for the September 1988 stabbing-bludgeoning murders of Houston Grand Opera tenors Richard Wrotenbery and Forrest Henderson. Jackson, 42, went to his death without making a final statement.
"A man who maintained he was unfairly convicted of the 1988 slayings of two Houston opera singers was executed Tuesday evening."
That's the lead sentence in today's Houston Chronicle article.
How is it news for him to claim he was unfairly convicted? Does it reveal anything about the nature of today's reporting to place that in the opening phrase? After all, the one thing that has been litigated and determined beyond a reasonable doubt and reviewed by numerous courts and agencies is the issue of guilt. The one thing that was established in the strongest possible manner was guilt.
Using well-accepted forensic science, including fingerprint comparison and DNA. So, again, what is revealed by the reporter's choice of words to open the story?
I guess that is a little more attention-grabbing than "prisoner executed after mundane life on death row."
Seriously, I suspect the reporter is trying to grab the attention of both supporters and opponents of the death penalty. Supporters will read on, hoping to find his claim of innocence refuted later in the story, and opponents will want to immerse themselves in the details of another wrongful execution.
The first instance of capital punishment on record in America was the shooting in colonial Virginia of George Kendall, accused of plotting to betray the British to the Spanish. If he had any parting quips, they were not written down. We have to wait for the execution of two Quakers, Marmaduke Stevenson and William Robinson, fifty years later, on October 27, 1659, for an account of the last words of the condemned. As one would expect, the two men, who were convicted and hung for disobeying banishment from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, reaffirmed their faith in God and reminded the spectators to mind the light that shone within them. Since then, as Last Words of the Executed, an enthralling book by Robert K. Elder, amply documents, there have been over sixteen thousand executions in this country and a vast record of final pronouncements taken from prison records, eyewitness statements, newspaper accounts, period diaries and written statements. Some of these are credibly attributable to the executed while others are of questionable origin or indisputably redacted.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has refused a clemency petition from condemned killer Peter Cantu, who is set to die next week in Huntsville for a notorious 1993 double rape-slaying in Houston.
[1993 was when the Legislature adopted a rewrite of the Penal Code, toughened the parole laws for violent crimes and the public approved a $1 billion bond package for expanding Texas prisons to add 100,000 beds. Killers like Cantu had arisen because of the lenient parole policy and the absence of meaningful sentences for violent and repeat offeders.]
The legal saga that began several days after the horrifying murder of two teenage Houston girls in 1993 came to an end Tuesday night with the execution of Peter Anthony Cantu, a former gang leader who all but ordered the execution of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena.
Cantu did not make a final statement. He was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m. The parents of Ertman and Pena, supported by other family members and friends, looked on as Cantu stared straight up toward the ceiling, taking one deep breath before he closed his eyes. He did not acknowledge the victims' families and he had no personal witnesses attending the execution.
Prayers for Ms. Ertman, Ms. Pena and their families. Everyone who lived in Houston at that time recalls the terror and sadness that gripped the city in the aftermath of this horror.
One more killer who won't kill again.
Posts: 2578 | Location: The Great State of Texas | Registered: December 26, 2001
Teresa Lewis spent the last days before her execution as she had spent one side of her life - singing hymns and praying. That devotion to Christianity, by her own admission, was countered by outrageous bouts of sex and betrayal.
Teresa Lewis "only" recruited (via sex, cash and a promised cut from an insurance policy) two triggermen to gun down her husband and her husband's son in their sleep in 2002, so in the eyes of the liberal media, she's someone to feel sorry for.
Frankly, I feel sorry for the two men this woman killed. How come there is no liberal media weeping for the lives of two men wrongfully taken? Where were their civil rights? Where is their due prcess? Why is there no liberal concern for this killer acting as judge, jury and executioner?
Yes, she's a hero to the anti-death penalty liberals who tout her as "mentally disabled".
If she can make a decision to kill an innocent(s), we can execute her for her crimes. What's so hard to understand about that?
A federal judge cleared the way Friday for California's first execution since 2006, citing the state's efforts to revise its lethal injection procedure amid court concerns that it had amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
Incidentally, Kagan, the newest SCOTUS judge, voted against a stay of execution for Teresa Lewis. The other two female SCOTUS judges, Ginsberg and Sotomayor, voted in favor of the stay of execution. Perhaps Kagan does have retain some appreciation for law enforcement.
