[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, OHIO, MO., ARIZ., NEV., CALIF., USA
Sept. 14 TEXAS: Hudson murder trial could face lengthy delay William Hudson, 33, has been indicted on 3 counts of capital murder in the massacre of 2 families at a hunting campsite in the East Texas town of Tennessee Colony. Health problems suffered by William Mitchell Hudson's attorney could delay the trial of the accused murderer for weeks. Hudson's lawyer, Stephen Evans, was hospitalized on Tuesday for an undisclosed health matter and remained under medical care on Wednesday. The trial, set for Sept. 25, will take place in Bryan College Station. The final pre-trial hearing is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 21. That hearing is still on the docket, said Judge Mark Calhoon, who will preside over the trial. Hudson is represented by Evans and defense attorney Jeff Herrington. Hudson will be tried for the November 2015 murders of six people: the Johnson and Kamp families, who were spending the weekend in Tennessee Colony at a campsite. Thomas Kamp had purchased the campsite from a relative of William Mitchell Hudson, adjacent to property owned by Hudson and his family. Hudson helped the Kamp/Johnson group with a vehicle stuck in the mud; he was invited to hang out with the family at its campsite. After a night of drinking with Hudson, events reportedly became violent. Cynthia Johnson survived a night of horror, before contacting Anderson County law enforcement the following morning. Law-enforcement officers and first-responders found the bodies of Carl Johnson and his daughter in a travel trailer at the campsite; the other victims were in a pond on Hudson's property. All of the victims were shot to death, except Hannah Johnson, who was killed with blunt force. Hudson was arrested and charged with 3 counts of capital murder for killing 6 people. He was indicted in December 2015 for the capital murders of Carl Johnson, 76; his daughter, Hannah Johnson, 40; his grandson, Kade, 6; Thomas Kamp, 45; and his 2 sons, Nathan Kamp, 23, and Austin Kamp, 21. In a February 2016 arraignment, Hudson plead "not guilty" to all 3 counts of capital murder. On Jan. 23, according to court records, District Attorney Allyson Mitchell filed a State of Notice to Seek the Death Penalty. The next day, Mitchell signed documents stating that the court had officially moved to Bryan in Brazos County for the change of venue. Hudson spent 2 weeks in a hospital in Tyler in July. Speculation that Hudson attempted suicide has not been confirmed by the court, the Anderson County Jail or Sheriff Taylor. (source: palestineherald.com) OHIO: Death sentence upheld in Warren execution-style slaying The Ohio Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty for the man convicted of murdering a Warren man and kidnapping a woman during a robbery. The court affirmed the death sentence for David Martin on Wednesday, just 1 day before Martin will turn 33-years-old. Martin has been on death row since 2014 when he was sentenced by a judge in Trumbull County on convictions of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and tampering with evidence. Investigators say Martin shot 21-year-old Jeremy Cole execution style and wounded Melissa Putnam during an attempted robbery in Warren in 2012. According to investigators, after Martin tied up both victims, Melissa Putnam heard a shot then saw Martin standing over her. Putnam put her hand over her face and said, "Please don't shoot me in the face." Martin said, "I'm sorry, Missy," and shot her, according to court records. The bullet passed through Putnam's right hand and entered her neck, leaving fragments in the right side of her neck near the base of her skull. On the day of the sentencing, Assistant Prosecutor Chris Becker described Martin as a cold-blooded killer and a life-long criminal. Among other issues, Martin's attorney questions whether an impartial jury was seated to hear the case due to pretrial publicity regarding the crime and Martin's association with a hostage situation at the Trumbull County Jail four months before his trial. Martin is scheduled for execution on May 26, 2021. (source: WFMJ news) * Attorney for executed Parma murderer says she believes inmate suffered pain during lethal injection An attorney for Gary Otte, a man put to death Wednesday for killing 2 people in Parma in 1992, said she saw signs that her client experienced pain as the execution team injected him with a sedative, the 1st of 3-drug combination. Carol Wright, the supervising attorney for the Columbus Federal Public Defender's Office's capital unit, watched Otte's execution from the viewing area of the state's death house. The execution was carried out Wednesday morning at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, and Otte was pronounced dead at 10:54 a.m. Wright said Otte's movements and actions as he received midazolam, a sedative,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, OHIO, MO.
April 5 TEXASimpending execution South Texas man set to die said he drank victim's blood Pablo Lucio Vasquez remembered getting drunk and high on an April evening in 1998 before leaving a party with his 15-year-old cousin and his cousin's 12-year-old friend. Vasquez later would tell detectives that as they reached a wooden shed, he started hearing voices telling him to kill the younger boy, David Cardenas. So he hit the 7th-grader in the head from behind with a pipe, cut his throat and lifted the still-conscious victim so blood would drip on the 20-year-old Vasquez's face. "Something just told me to drink," Vasquez said in a videotaped statement to police in Donna, a small town in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. "You drink what?" a detective asked. "His blood," Vasquez replied. Vasquez, now 38, is set for lethal injection Wednesday for what police speculated at the time may have been an attempted satanic cult crime. Evidence of that nature, however, didn't surface at Vasquez's 1999 capital murder trial or in appeals, where courts as recent as last month rejected arguments that Vasquez was mentally ill and should be exempt from the death penalty. His execution would be the 11th this year nationally and the 6th in Texas. Vasquez's lawyer, James Keegan, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the punishment so the justices can consider arguments that several potential jurors were excluded improperly at Vasquez's trial because they either were opposed to the death penalty or not comfortable making such a judgment. A death sentence shouldn't be carried out if it was reached by a jury that rejected members "simply because they voiced general objections to the death penalty or expressed conscientious or religious scruples against its infliction," Keegan told the high court, which did not immediately rule on the appeal. 18 years ago this month, Cardenas, who lived with his sister about 5 miles from Donna, was spending the weekend with Vasquez's cousin, 15-year-old Andres Rafael Chapa. Both went to a party on April 18 and were seen rolling marijuana cigarettes; Vasquez also attended. Police received an anonymous tip about the slaying that led them to Chapa and eventually to Vasquez, who was arrested in Conroe, a Houston suburb more than 325 miles north of Donna. Authorities found the body - missing some limbs - 5 days later under scraps of aluminum in a vacant field. A blood trail showed it was dragged to the site, including across a 4-lane main street in Donna. "They decided they were going to try to take his head off with a shovel and didn't realize that it was a lot more difficult to cut someone's head off," Joseph Orendain, the lead trial prosecutor, recalled last week. "It was a mutilated body left behind. ... It was really horrendous." Vasquez, who said he took a gold ring and necklace from Cardenas, told police that Chapa participated in trying to decapitate the boy. "The devil was telling me to take [the head] away from him," Vasquez said, adding that "it couldn't come off." Chapa pleaded guilty to a murder charge for his involvement and is serving a 35-year prison term. 3 other relatives of Chapa and Vasquez received probation and a small fine for helping cover up the slaying. 1 of them was deported to Guatemala. Vasquez declined an interview request from The Associated Press as his execution date neared. His statement to police fueled speculation about satanism, but Orendain said he had no idea whether that connection could be made. "He was really just a sociopath," Orendain said. (source: Dallas Morning News) OHIO: Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell fights death sentence, Ohio Supreme Court to hear appealSowell's attorney's to argue for a new trial The Ohio Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday for a new trial for condemned serial killer Anthony Sowell, who killed 11 women and hid their bodies in and around his home. Sowell, 56, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2011. Sowell's new attorneys are fighting the death sentence for their client. They claimed that his original defense attorneys wasted time challenging the evidence against Sowell, when they should have focused on sparing him the death penalty, based on Sowell's chaotic childhood and background, ABC News reported. Sowell's attorneys also said the judge in the case should not have closed a July 2010 hearing in which lawyers argued over a video of Sowell's police interview. In addition, they argued that the judge shouldn't have put the individual questioning of potential jurors off limits to the public, the Associated Press reported. Sowell's victims were black, homeless, drug- or alcohol-addicted women, who ranged in age from 25 to 52; some of their families filed police reports, others were used to long unexplained absences and didn't bother, the Washington Post reported. According to the authorities, he seemed harmless
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, OHIO, MO., NEB., UTAH, USA
March 16 TEXASnew execution date Gregory Russeau has been given an execution date for June 18; it should be considered serious. (sources: TDCJ Rick Halperin) *** Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present4 Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982present-522 Abbott#scheduled execution date-nameTx. # 5Mar. 18---Randall Mays-523 6Apr. 9Kent Sprouse-524 7Apr. 15---Manual Garza-525 8---Apr. 23---Richard Vasquez--526 9---Apr. 28---Robert Pruett---527 10---May 12Derrick Charles--528 11---June 18---Gregory Russeau529 (sources: TDCJ Rick Halperin) ** Texas Executed a Dad for Burning His 3 Young Kids to Death. Now a Letter is Casting Doubt He Did It. Convicted in 1991 for the alleged arson murder of his 3 young daughters at his home in Corsicana, TX, he maintained his innocence for 13 years until being executed by the state in 2004. Willingham claimed he woke up from a nap after inhaling smoke, and after looking around the house, he couldn't find his children. He left the burning house in a state of disorientation. Johnny Webb - his cellmate in state prison - had a different story; a spontaneous confession that was a significant factor in the trial: ...he had set the fire to cover up his wife's abuse of 1 of the girls. Autopsies of the girls showed no signs of abuse - but it was the strongest evidence the prosecution had other than the finding of arson by fire investigators. That finding has been discredited by a series of forensic experts. It was a high-profile case that caught national attention due to the fire's tragic outcome. As such, there was pressure to issue a definitive conviction. Recently, formerly undisclosed new evidence in the form of a letter has surfaced, undermining the validity of the prosecution and its key witness, Johnny Webb. In a recent interview with The Marshall Project, Webb stated: I lied on the man because I was being forced by John Jackson to do so, I succumbed to pressure when I shouldn't have. In the end, I was told, 'You're either going to get a life sentence or you're going to testify.' He coerced me to do it. It may or not have been coercion, but regardless, Webb chose to testify: Jackson pointedly asked Webb on the witness stand whether he had been promised a lighter sentence or some other benefit for his cooperation. Webb told the judge and jury that he had not. After the secured death penalty conviction, Webb wrote to the prosecutor from state prison, urging him to come through on his end of the secretive deal to have his own criminal sentence reduced. Soon after receiving the letter: Within days, the prosecutor, John H. Jackson, sought out the Navarro County judge who had handled Willingham's case and came away with a court order that altered the record of Webb's robbery conviction to make him immediately eligible for parole. Webb would later recant his testimony that Willingham confessed to setting his house on fire with the toddlers inside. More controversy accounted in documents published by The Washington Post last year revealed that not only was Webb's prison sentence reduced by TX Criminal Justice officials - but an incriminating web of individuals helped secure Webb a financial incentive: During and after Webb was in state prison, he received thousands of dollars in aid from a wealthy local businessman, Charles S. Pearce Jr. Webb said in interviews that Pearce had helped him at the behest of Jackson; Patrick C. Batchelor, the district attorney; and the county sheriff. Webb received such high level attention because he was impatient to get his sentence reduced, prompting the letters written to Jackson that threatened to go public with his falsified testimony. They urged him against such action, and persuaded him accordingly. But that did not help with Webb's own feelings of guilt. That a man was by all appearances put to death by corruption is a mockery of the justice system. Regardless of where one stands on the issue of capital punishment, it seems hard not to agree with those at the Washington Post, who, in their write-up of the documents stated: Had such favorable treatment been revealed prior to his execution, Willingham might have had grounds to seek a new trial. The State Bar of Texas filed a misconduct complaint, falsifying official records, withholding evidence and obstructing justice last summer as a response to the outpouring of this evidence. (source: IJReview.com) OHIO: Kasich rarely uses clemency to pardon, commute sentences Gov. John Kasich's clemency record Cases received: 2,167 Cases decided: 1,521 Cases undecided: 646
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, OHIO, MO., NEB.
Nov. 24 TEXAS: Will Texas Kill an Insane Man? On Dec. 3, Texas plans to execute an inmate named Scott Panetti, who was convicted in 1995 for murdering his in-laws with a hunting rifle. There is no question that Mr. Panetti committed the murders. There is also no question that he is severely mentally ill, and has been for decades. During his capital murder trial, at which he was inexplicably allowed to represent himself, Mr. Panetti dressed in a cowboy suit and attempted to subpoena, among others, John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ. A standby lawyer said his behavior was scary and trance-like, and called the trial a judicial farce. It was not an act. Mr. Panetti, now 56, was first diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 20, and in the years before the murders he was hospitalized several times for delusions and psychotic episodes. In this respect, he is no different from the estimated 350,000 inmates around the country with mental illness - 10 times the number of people in state psychiatric hospitals. But Mr. Panetti is not just another insane prisoner; his name is synonymous with the Supreme Court's modern jurisprudence about mental illness on death row. In Panetti v. Quarterman, decided in 2007, the justices held that it is not enough for a defendant simply to be aware that he is going to be executed and why - the previous standard the court had used in permitting the execution of the mentally ill. Rather, he must have a rational understanding of why the state plans to kill him. Noting Mr. Panetti's well-documented history of mental illness, the court held that capital punishment serves no retributive purpose when the defendant's understanding of crime and punishment is so distorted that it has little or no relation to the understanding of those concepts shared by the community as a whole. For example, Mr. Panetti understood that the state claimed the reason for his death sentence was the murder of his in-laws, but he believed the real reason was spiritual warfare between the demons and the forces of the darkness and God and the angels and the forces of light. But the justices refused to set precise guidelines for determining whether someone is competent enough to be executed, and they did not overturn Mr. Panetti's sentence. Instead, they sent the case back to the lower courts for a fuller reconsideration of his current mental state. By any reasonable standard - not to mention the findings of multiple mental-health experts over the years - Mr. Panetti is mentally incompetent. But Texas, along with several other stubborn states, has a long history of finding the loopholes in Supreme Court rulings restricting the death penalty. The state has continued to argue that Mr. Panetti is exaggerating the extent of his illness, and that he understands enough to be put to death - a position a federal appeals court accepted last year, even though it agreed that he was seriously mentally ill. Mr. Panetti has not had a mental-health evaluation since 2007. In a motion hastily filed this month, his volunteer lawyers requested that his execution be stayed, that a lawyer be appointed for him, and that he receive funding for a new mental-health assessment, saying his functioning has only gotten worse. For instance, he now claims that a prison dentist implanted a transmitter in his tooth. The lawyers would have made this motion weeks earlier, immediately after a Texas judge set Mr. Panetti's execution date. But since no one - not the judge, not the district attorney, not the attorney general - notified them (or even Mr. Panetti himself), they had no idea their client was scheduled to be killed until they read about it in a newspaper. State officials explained that the law did not require them to provide notification. On Nov. 19, a Texas court denied the lawyers' motion. A civilized society should not be in the business of executing anybody. But it certainly cannot pretend to be adhering to any morally acceptable standard of culpability if it kills someone like Scott Panetti. (source: Editorial, New York Times) Show your support for Rodney Monday and Tuesday of this week will be national call-in days in solidarity with Rodney Reed, who is facing death in two month's time in the Texas execution chamber for a crime he didn't commit. Reed's supporters have called for a phone, fax and e-mail jam to the office of the Bastrop County District Attorney. On Tuesday, activists will be on hand at the Bastrop County courthouse for an important hearing. In this edited version of a statement for the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Lily Hughes explains the facts of Reed's case--and the urgent need to stand with him. Texas death row prisoner Rodney Reed has been given an execution date of January 14, 2015. The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear an appeal from Reed, although his case has attracted widespread attention
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, OHIO, MO., COLO., N.MEX., ARIZ., USA
Oct. 28 TEXASimpending execution San Antonio Man Set to Be Executed Tuesday A former San Antonio gang member is scheduled for execution Tuesday evening for his part in a 2002 triple slaying. Miguel Angel Paredes, 32, was convicted for the shooting deaths of Adrian Torres, 27; his 23-year-old girlfriend, Nelly Bravo; and Shawn Michael Cain, 23. Their burned bodies were found in nearby Frio County. Paredes would become the 10th person put to death this year in Texas, and the 518th since the state resumed executions in 1982. 2 co-defendants, John Anthony Saenz and Greg Alvarado, were also convicted in the deaths. Bexar County prosecutors claimed the 3 were settling a drug debt with Torres when the murders occurred. Paredes told the San Antonio Express-News he and his fellow Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos associates met up with Torres, a member of a rival gang, the Mexican Mafia, to confront him about threats he had made. Paredes, who was 18 at the time of the murders, was the only 1 of the 3 defendants sentenced to death. Saenz was found guilty of capital murder but sentenced to life in prison. Alvarado pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence. On Monday, Paredes' lawyer, David Dow of Houston, asked the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to stay the execution while it considers an appeal Dow also filed on Monday. In the appeal, Dow argues that another appellate attorney failed to investigate whether Paredes was taking psychiatric medication when he waived his right to challenge his sentence based on ineffective trial counsel. (source: Texas Tribune) * Inside the mind of a San Antonio man on death row: Condemned man finds art as release Miguel Angel Paredes, who is set to be executed Tuesday for a gang-sanctioned triple slaying in San Antonio, said during a death row interview with the Express-News last week that he has turned to artwork over the past 13 years while waiting for his sentence to be carried out. He has created sketches ranging from portraits of lions, puppies and dolphins to more haunting imagery, such as a man strapped to a death chamber gurney - arms outstretched, the IV line in place, with an angel in 1 witness box and the devil in the other. Each drawing is posted at minutesbeforesix.com and can be seen in the gallery above. Paredes, now 32, was convicted in 2001 of the capital murders a year earlier of Nelly Esmerelda Bravo, 23, her boyfriend and Texas Mexican Mafia member Adrian Torres, 27, and Shawn Michael Cain, 32. Paredes leveled a handgun to the head of Bravo as she begged for her life, ignoring her pleas, according to witness testimony at his trial. When the shot to her head wasn't fatal, Paredes fired a shotgun at her chest. Co-defendants Greg Alvarado and John Anthony Saenz - who, like Paredes, were members of the Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos prison gang - are both serving life sentences. Paredes said he is remorseful for the slayings. All that gang life folklore, the romanticism, it's crap, he said. As long as one kid sees beyond all that crap because of my situation, that's fine. READY TO DIE Parades was 18 at the time of the killings and was jailed as a minor for murder. His co-defendants received life sentences. Paredes told the San Antonio Express-News he was ready to die for his crimes. For me, what matters is that people really get to see the reality of the death penalty, that it's affecting people that are invisible, like my son, my loved ones, my family. They're the ones really carrying that burden, he told the paper in an interview published over the weekend. (sources: mysanantonio.com Reuters) San Antonio gang member faces execution A former San Antonio gang member set to die tonight in Huntsville for a triple slaying 14 years ago has lost a federal court appeal. Miguel Paredes was 18 when he was arrested 2 days after a farmer investigating a grass fire on a remote stretch of road near his South Texas home discovered the bodies of 2 men and a woman from San Antonio. The 3 had been shot, bound and wrapped in carpet that was set ablaze and dumped in Frio County. Paredes, now 32, is set for lethal injection Tuesday evening. Prosecutors say the slayings were the result of a drug dispute involving rival gangs. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected an appeal to halt the punishment, the 10th this year in Texas. (source: KSAT news) OHIO: Appeals court upholds Ohio killer's death sentence A federal appeals court has upheld the death sentence for the condemned killer of a Toledo woman, rejecting arguments that he is mentally disabled and received poor legal assistance. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals also rejected a claim by death row inmate James Frazier that the death penalty amounts to unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. The court's ruling Monday involved
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, OHIO, MO., COLO., USA
Sept. 2 TEXAS: Doubts soften embrace of Texas capital punishment Perhaps nothing symbolizes this state's swagger over being tough on crime like Old Sparky, an electric chair that was used to execute 361 inmates and is now the centerpiece of a prison museum. It sits just minutes from the Texas penitentiary where it was forever unplugged 50 years ago this summer following the execution of Houston's Joseph Johnson Jr. for murdering a grocer. While the oak chair is now a capital punishment relic photographed daily by visitors, this state's death row is undergoing what looks to be a historic shift. Texas forged an international reputation as it has executed far more inmates than any other state in the nation since 1982, when it resumed capital punishment with lethal injection. But this year, Texas just may lose its distinction as the state carrying out the most executions annually, sitting in a three-way tie with Missouri and Florida. Each state has executed seven people so far this year. In Texas, a slew of changes in capital punishment that have been trotted out over the past decade or so and are taking hold. Those include requiring better legal representation for people facing the death penalty, giving jurors the option of sentencing defendants to life in prison without parole, and increasing the use of DNA and other scientific testing. And significant to the change is the realization by lawmakers and others that the system that condemns someone is not bulletproof. The state executed an average of 29 people annually from 1997 to 2007, with 40 in 2000, according to statistics maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center. But it is now on track to have no more than 11 this year, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the fewest number in 23 years. Texas is not getting weaker on crime, but getting smarter about who is sentenced to death by reducing the chances of condemning an innocent person, said former Texas Gov. Mark White. We are starting to recognize that being tough on crime doesn't mean you have to be tough on innocent people, White told the Houston Chronicle. We have learned a lot: use the cutting edge of science, and not just the fast draw of the Old West. He pointed to more than a dozen Texas death row inmates who were convicted, only to years later be freed on the grounds they were innocent. Being tough on an innocent person, that ain't tough, that is stupid, White said. Being tough on crime does not mean being careless in how you find a perpetrator. Anthony Graves is among the innocent. He was exonerated 4 years ago in the 1992 Burleson County murder of a woman as well as her 4 grandchildren and daughter. He had been convicted of helping Robert Carter in the murders, but from shortly after Carter's arrest to his last declaration from the gurney moments before his execution, Carter said Graves had no role. Students in a University of St. Thomas journalism class worked with The Innocence Network at the University of Houston Law Center to review the Graves case, and Graves' lawyers later successfully argued that prosecutors elicited false statements from 2 witnesses and withheld 2 statements that could have changed the minds of jurors. The district attorney conceded that Graves did not do the crime and dropped the charges rather than pursue a new trial. Graves said the debate should no longer be about whether it is right or wrong to execute a person, but whether the current justice system gets it right. That is when you have an honest conversation about it, he said of focusing on whether the system works properly. To each his own. You cannot get mad at somebody because they believe someone should be executed for a crime they committed. That is between them and their god. Graves said that he believes more Texans are now realizing that sometimes the wrong person is sent to death row. I did not give up eighteen and a half years of my life to come out here and be called some liberal activist against the death penalty, said Graves, who was improperly convicted due in part to official misconduct, perjury and misleading scientific information. From what I have gone through, I have seen it fail from top to bottom, he said. I see a failed system that wrongfully convicted me, put me on death row and tried to murder me. There is no way in hell that I can tell you that works. Other exonerations have hinged on scientific work, and DNA comparisons have grown more and more heralded each year. Michael Blair, who was wrongfully convicted in 1993 for killing a 7-year-old girl in Collin County was freed in 2008 due in part to DNA testing. In 2013, such testing of all biological evidence became required by Texas law in all death-penalty cases. Besides seeing a drop in the number of people the state executes, the number Texas sends to death row annually also has decreased. This state now trails
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, OHIO, MO., USA, N.MEX., PENN.
Sept. 19 TEXASimpending execution Killer of 5 at Dallas-area car wash set to die The Texas parole board has rejected a clemency request from a convicted killer set to die this week for a robbery and shooting spree that left 5 people dead at a Dallas-area car wash 12 years ago. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down the request from 40-year-old Robert Wayne Harris on Tuesday. He still has appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court to try to keep him from lethal injection Thursday evening in Huntsville. Harris was condemned for the massacre at the Mi-T-Fine Car Wash in Irving in March 2000 a week after he'd been fired from his job there. He's never denied the crime. He also was charged but never tried for the abduction-slaying of an Irving woman 4 months before the car wash killings. (source: Associated Press) OHIOimpending execution Condemned Ohio Man To Be Prepped For Execution A condemned Ohio man is set to be moved from the state's death row in Chillicothe to the site of his Thursday execution in Lucasville. State officials are expected to move Donald Palmer to death row on Wednesday, the day before he is set to be executed by lethal injection for a crime committed 23 years ago. The 43-year-old was convicted of aggravated murder for fatally shooting two strangers along a Belmont County road on May 8, 1989. Palmer's attorney says he hadn't planned on filing any other appeals and expected the execution to proceed. Palmer also decided not to request mercy from the Ohio Parole Board, which can recommend clemency for a condemned inmate to the governor. Including Palmer, 10 Ohio inmates are scheduled for execution through March 2014. (source: NBC News) Ohio's execution drug supply expires in 1 year Ohio has enough of its now-off-limits execution drug to complete 7 of its 10 scheduled lethal injections, meaning that over the next year it must somehow acquire new batches or again switch to a different drug, according to a review of state pharmacy documents by The Associated Press. The state's supply of pentobarbital expires next September, and the sedative's manufacturer has agreed to prevent its sale to prisons for executions. Ohio and other states stockpiled supplies before that went into effect. The state plans to put a killer of 2 men to death Thursday and has executions scheduled through March 2014. Those include three executions after the drug expires at the end of September 2013. Prisons agency spokeswoman JoEllen Smith told the AP on Tuesday that the department will be working with state pharmacists and the attorney general's office to address the issue. She declined further comment. It's unclear what Ohio would do once the supply runs out. Prisons director Gary Mohr testified in federal court in March that an altered version of pentobarbital or a supply imported from overseas would not necessarily violate the prison's execution policies. Expired batches of the drug would violate the policies, he said. Other states are also facing possible pentobarbital shortages, and Missouri switched to another drug altogether earlier this year. That drug, propofol, is perhaps best known as the drug that killed pop star Michael Jackson in 2009. It has never been used in a U.S. execution. The Missouri Supreme Court has declined to set execution dates for 6 condemned killers, saying doing so is premature until the courts decide if Missouri's new method is constitutional. Arizona's supply is running low, with enough pentobarbital on hand for at least 2 more executions, Kent Cattani, the state???s chief death penalty prosecutor, said Tuesday. In July, Texas prison officials disclosed they have enough pentobarbital to execute as many as 23 people. The same month, Oklahoma announced it had secured 20 new doses of pentobarbital. Pentobarbital is a surgical sedative that is sometimes employed in assisted suicides and is commonly used to destroy dogs and cats. Last year, the only U.S.-licensed maker of pentobarbital sold the product to another firm. Denmark-based Lundbeck Inc. said a distribution system meant to keep the drug out of the hands of prisons would remain in place as Lake Forest, Ill.-based Akorn Inc. acquired the drug. Several states, including Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, had switched to pentobarbital after supplies of a previous execution drug dried up. (source: Associated Press) 480-pound death row inmate can't be executed until he loses weight talk shows According to an article on the Huffington Post website on September 18, 2012, a death row inmate says he is too obese to be executed when scheduled. Ronald Post, 53, who weighs at least 480 pounds, is scheduled to be executed on January 16, 2013 for the 1983 shooting and killing of Helen Vantz, a hotel clerk in northern Ohio. Post has requested that his upcoming
