k0710 The final 24 hours of Louis Jones Jr.’ s life unfolded in a stark holding cell at the US Penitentiary in Terre Haute, a man once celebrated as a decorated Vietnam veteran now counting down the moments until the federal government would end his life by lethal injection. His attorney, Timothy Floyd, described him as … Read more
The final appeals had been exhausted. The governors had refused clemency. The courts had closed their doors. At Charlestown State Prison in Boston, Massachusetts, the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti was now a certainty, a clock ticking down to midnight on August 22, 1927. The world held its breath, braced for the culmination … Read more
The final appeals had been exhausted. The governors had refused clemency. The courts had closed their doors. At Charlestown State Prison in Boston, Massachusetts, the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti was now a certainty, a clock ticking down to midnight on August 22, 1927. The world held its breath, braced for the culmination … Read more
Es ist ein Bild, das niemand vergessen wird, der es gesehen hat. Ein 17-jähriger Junge, nur noch ein Schatten seiner selbst, liegt tot in den Ästen eines Baumes in einem Hintergarten in Mönchengladbach. Drei Monate lang blieb seine Leiche dort unentdeckt, versteckt im Geäst, während das Leben um ihn herum weiterging. Mark S. , der … Read more
The summer of 1985 in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, was supposed to be safe. Fifteen-year-old Christy Wesselman, a popular student and class vice president, stepped out of her home on July 21 to walk to a nearby store for a soda and chocolate bar. She never returned. For three decades, the mystery of her disappearance and … Read more
ATMORE, Alabama — Kenneth Eugene Smith’s death did not come easily, and it did not come quietly. The 58-year-old convicted murderer became the first person in American history executed by nitrogen hypoxia on Thursday night, a method that Alabama officials had touted as humane but which witnesses described as a harrowing spectacle of violent thrashing, … Read more
The condemned man sits in a cage of concrete and steel, a portrait of Princess Diana taped to the wall above his head, a cat named Mama curled at his feet. Frederick Bear, inmate 206 on Indiana’s death row, is a study in contradictions: a self-confessed thief who began stealing matchbox cars in kindergarten and … Read more
For thirty-five years, the small town of Salisbury, North Carolina, turned on itself, whispering accusations at a grieving 13-year-old girl and an elderly grandfather who made the fatal mistake of finding his own granddaughter’s body. They pointed fingers at neighbors, at strangers, at anyone but the man who had actually committed the crime. That man, … Read more
The silence in Death Row’s execution chamber was broken only by the hum of the lethal injection machinery. Danny Rolling, the man who plunged Gainesville into a nightmare, took his last breath at 6:13 p. m. on October 25, 2006. He sang a religious hymn as the drugs flowed, offering no final words of remorse … Read more
In the wake of Californa Gov. Gavin Newsom signing a moratorium on executions, The Fresno Bee looks back at past San Quentin executions. Three men from the San Joaquin Valley have been executed since California reinstituted the death penalty in 1977. Clarence Ray Allen of Fresno in 2006 was the last California execution at San … Read more