This week has been heavy on state killings. For the year we are predicting less than 60 executions. Here are this week's killings.
- Larry Eugene Hutcherson was executed Thursday night by lethal injection for the 1992 killing of an 89-year-old Mobile woman, Irma Thelma Gray. Hutcherson apologized to the victim's family in a brief final statement and asked for forgiveness. "I'm so very sorry for hurting you like this. It's been a long time coming. I hope this gives you closure and someday find forgiveness for me." A chaplain knelt beside the gurney and held Hutcherson's left hand and both prayed as he died. There are currently 192 inmates on Alabama's death row.
- Danny Harold Rolling, a "52-year-old Louisiana drifter, robber and admitted killer of five Gainesville, Fla., college students in August 1990, sang for more than two minutes until he was injected with a lethal mix of drugs. Ten minutes later at 6:13 p.m. he was pronounced dead."
- Texas executed Gregory Summers, 48, convicted of paying a hit man to kill his parents in 1990 in an attempt to collect their life insurance and an inheritance. Summers was the 22nd inmate executed this year in Texas. David has a great post below on the case.
2 comments:
Thanks to NCADP for your years of working against the death penalty. When I was in law school, learning more than ever how rampant and brutally this legalized murder was taking place (1986-89), I took comfort that -- with NCADP, the ACLU, Amnesty, and many fellow law students and others -- I was not alone in my outrage.
I encourage everyone never to give up and never to give in on the path to abolishing the death penalty.
Here's a vignette of one of my abolitionist activities -- taking on Justice Scalia on the death penalty, from the Underdog Blog: http://www.markskatz.com/CRIMINALBLOG.htm#16
Underdog
Hi
How r u doing?
Death penalty is an ultimate cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment. As we all know, a criminal is not born as such, his/her circumstances, life's problems and influences makes him so. Involved reasons include our inefficient and corrupt legal/judicial system as well. Police here easily and forcibly takes confessions from the accused by applying IIIrd degree torture and moreover some judges auction "judicial orders" for bribe.
In these cases, capital punishment is unfair & inhumane. Judges are human beings and so can err as well. No judge is god. If a hanged person is later found innocent can the judge bring back the dead to life? Death penalty is irreversible, irrevocable and fundamentally, has failed as a deterrent. The people who give an outcry for continuation of death penalty as a punishment, are biased, butchers and cannibals. Those condemned to death penalty are usually the poor, tribal, dalits or political dissidents, who are unable to afford & articulate lawyers who can efficiently argue their case. No rich & mighty criminal is ever prosecuted.
Some say, death penalty is a good return for killers; others think abolishing death penalty is the best. I think, our aim should be to kill the criminal in the human and not the human himself. Post your points on http://indiademocracy.com/article/user/article.jsp?articleid=art20061009215849 or
http://www.indiademocracy.com/blogs/template1.jsp?blogid=blog20061009215749
Ur new friend
Simran Khan
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