Death Row

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani officials commemorated Benazir Bhutto's birthday yesterday with plans to rename an airport after the slain former prime minister, build a monument on the site of her assassination, and grant clemency to thousands of death row inmates. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced the measures in a speech to parliament, which observed a minute of silence for Bhutto, who would have turned 55 yesterday. Bhutto, who was head of the Pakistan People's Party, was assassinated in a bombing and shooting attack outside a December election rally in the garrison...

A condemned killer's fight to receive surgery for agonizing hip pain pushed Kentucky officials into an uncomfortable debate over security, politics and even the possibility of inviting scorn from Fox News pundits. Emails and memos obtained by The Associated Press show corrections officials struggling for a year to reconcile their duty to provide medical care with the political ramifications of spending tens of thousands of dollars for surgery on a man they plan to execute. A key problem would turn out to be security issues that led several hospitals to balk at treating inmate Robert...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court yesterday ordered a new hearing for death row inmate Troy Davis, who supporters say is innocent and should be spared from execution in the killing of an off-duty police officer almost 20 years ago. Davis has spent 18 years on death row for the 1989 slaying of Savannah, Ga., police officer Mark MacPhail. Davis’s attorneys insist that he is innocent and deserves a new trial because several witnesses at his trial have recanted. The high court ordered a federal judge in Georgia to determine whether there is evidence “that could not have been obtained at the...

A man on Connecticut's death row for the murder of a suburban mother and her two daughters says he believes the only way he will be put to death is if he volunteers for the lethal injection. Joshua Komisarjevsky, who was condemned to die for a brutal 2007 home invasion, told The Associated Press in an interview that he considers volunteering to be executed on his darkest days, but not on other days. In the last half-century, Connecticut has executed only one inmate — a serial killer who was put to death in 2005 after voluntarily waiving his appeals.

NEW YORK -- "Let's do it. " With those last words, Gary Gilmore, the much-chronicled convicted killer, ushered in the modern era of capital punishment in the United States, an age of busy death chambers that will probably record a 1,000th execution in coming days. In 1977, after a 10-year moratorium, Gilmore became the first person executed. His death followed a US Supreme Court decision that validated state laws to reform the capital punishment system. Since, 997 prisoners have been executed, and next week, the 998th, 999th, and 1,000th are scheduled to die. On Wednesday,...

"Every person is more than the worst thing they've ever done. " If you have trouble with that concept, voiced by a prisoners' rights activist, you'll have trouble with "The Dhamma Brothers," a sincere but unevenly made documentary about Buddhism on death row. If, on the other hand, you believe that even murderers have the right to inner peace - which no one here seems to mistake for simple forgiveness - the film is as thought-provoking as it aims...

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- For Scott Peterson, ultimately there may be little difference between a death sentence and life in prison. In California, the chances are greater that a condemned inmate will die in prison than be executed by lethal injection. California is home to the nation's most clogged death row, housing 641 condemned men and women, but the state has executed just 10 inmates since it resumed capital punishment in 1978. In that same period, 38 death row inmates have died of other causes: Three were killed by other prisoners, a dozen committed suicide, and the...

WASHINGTON -- The number of people sentenced to death reached a 30-year low in 2003, when the death row population fell for the third straight year, the government reported yesterday. Last year, 144 inmates in 25 states were given the death penalty, 24 fewer than in 2002 and less than half the average of 297 between 1994 and 2000, according to the Justice Department. Death penalty opponents say the report indicates that the public is wary of executions, heightened by publicity about those wrongly convicted and concerns about whether the punishment is administered fairly.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- The Illinois Supreme Court ruled yesterday that former governor George Ryan had the power to commute the sentences of everyone on the state's death row before he left office last year. The Republican governor commuted the sentences of 167 inmates and pardoned four others, acting three years after he had halted all state executions over concerns of unjust convictions. The state attorney general challenged Ryan's constitutional authority in 32 of the cases, arguing some of the inmates hadn't sought clemency as required by state law and others didn't have death...

The only Canadian on death row in the United States is asking the Montana Parole Board to instead let him live the rest of his life in prison. Ronald A. Smith of Red Deer, Alberta, was sentenced to death in 1983, seven months after he marched cousins Harvey Mad Man, 23, and Thomas Running Rabbit, 20, into the woods just off U.S. 2 near Marias Pass and shot them both in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. They had picked up Smith, who was partying his way around northern Montana with some friends.

A Scotsman released from prison four years ago after spending two decades on Ohio's death row will learn Monday whether he'll be going go back to prison. Ken Richey faces up to three years in prison when he's sentenced Monday for threatening a judge in the Ohio village of Ottawa who prosecuted his original case. Richey pleaded guilty to a felony retaliation charge last month. He says he'd been drinking heavily before he left a threatening phone message and regrets making the call from his Mississippi home last New Year's Eve. Richey was on death row for 21 years after being...

The only Canadian on death row in the United States is asking the Montana Parole Board to instead let him live the rest of his life in prison. Ronald A. Smith of Red Deer, Alberta, was sentenced to death in 1983, seven months after he marched cousins Harvey Mad Man, 23, and Thomas Running Rabbit, 20, into the woods just off U.S. 2 near Marias Pass and shot them both in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. They had picked up Smith, who was partying his way around northern Montana with some friends.

Wednesday, May 2, is the 123d day of 2012. There are 243 days left in the year. Today's birthdays: Actor Theodore Bikel is 88. Singer Engelbert Humperdinck is 76. Actress and activist Bianca Jagger is 67. Country singer R.C. Bannon is 67. Singer Lesley Gore is 66. Actor David Suchet is 66. Singer Larry Gatlin is 64. Rock singer Lou Gramm is 62. Actress Christine Baranski is 60. Singer Angela Bofill is 58. Director Stephen Daldry is 52. Actress...

After more than nine hours of debate, the Connecticut House of Representatives voted, 86 to 62, to repeal the state's death penalty Wednesday, following a similar vote in the State Senate last week. Governor Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, has said he will sign the bill, which would make Connecticut the 17th state and the fifth in five years to abolish capital punishment. The vote came against the backdrop of one of a 2007 home invasion in Cheshire in which a woman and her daughters were held hostage and murdered and their house set afire by two habitual criminals who are now on death row. The bill...

STARKE, Fla. - A Florida inmate was put to death Thursday, nearly three decades after the murder of 17-year-old Lynn Elliott, whose futile bid to flee led to his capture and ended a string of rapes and slayings that shook the quiet coastal town of Vero Beach. David Alan Gore, 58, was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. Thursday after receiving an injection at the Florida State Prison, officials said. Asked if he had a final statement, Gore said as he lay strapped to a gurney: "Yes, I do. " "I want to say to the Elliott family, I am sorry for the death of your...

An Arkansas inmate sentenced to death for killing a University of Arkansas student is seeking a new trial. A judge in Fayetteville is considering the request from Zachariah Marcyniuk, who was sentenced to die by lethal injection for the killing of his ex-girlfriend, Katie Wood. The Northwest Arkansas Times reports ( http://is.gd/Qa7tBC) that the hearing began Wednesday and continues Thursday. Marcyniuk claims his trial attorney did not ask prospective jurors whether they would automatically vote to impose the death penalty upon a conviction.

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- A college student whose younger sister was murdered more than a decade ago was presented yesterday with a scholarship from an unlikely source: death row inmates from around the country. Zach Osborne was only 6 years old, and his sister, Natalie, was 4 when she was raped and murdered in 1992. Their mother's boyfriend, Jeff Kandies, is on North Carolina's death row for the crime. Yesterday, Osborne, 19, received a $5,000 college scholarship from a group of inmates who solicited money through their bimonthly publication "Compassion.

Monument Mountain Regional High School junior Matthew Vernon Whalan wasn't even born when Jimmy Davis Jr. was sentenced to death row for murder in the state of Alabama in 1994. But Whalan, 16, has grown up with Davis' story, as told by Whalan's grandfather, Jack Lahr. Lahr, a retired Washington, D.C. attorney, took on Davis' case in 1999, with the belief that Davis did not receive a fair trial. Today, Davis still sits on death row, and Lahr is still working on the man's case.

NASHVILLE - Authorities in Tennessee say two men, including a former prison guard, have been arrested in a plot to break out Tennessee's lone female death row inmate. Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Kristin Helm said Wednesday there was no imminent danger of an escape by Christa Gail Pike, but "there was plan in the works and money changing hands. " Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the slaying of a fellow Knoxville Job Corps student. Colleen Slemmer, 18, was stabbed and beaten by Pike and Tadaryl Shipp, Pike's boyfriend at the time, on the University of...

A Manchester police officer was shot in the line of duty on Wednesday night, authorities said. The officer was responding to an incident on the west side of the city at about 6:30 p.m. when he was shot, Manchester police said in a statement. The release provided no details about the incident, and law enforcement officials could not immediately be reached for further comment. The officer was taken to an area hospital for treatment, police said. The statement provided no details on his injuries.