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Executions


Cleve Foster - Texas - September 26, 2012





Summary of Offense:
On February 14, 2002, in Tarrant County, Texas, Foster and Sheldon Ward sexually assaulted and shot Nyanuer “Mary” Pal, 28, resulting in her death. They then moved the body of the victim to a ditch where it was discovered by workers who were laying pipe.

Foster was sentenced to death in March 2004.

Ward was also sentenced to death. He died from cancer in May 2010.

Victim(s): Nyanuer “Mary” Pal

Time of Death: 6:43 p.m.

Manner of execution: Lethal Injection

Last Meal: . Barbecue sandwiches, Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots, and sliced bread.

Final Statement: "Yes, you know I sat in my cell many days wondering what my
last words would be. Love for my family, grandson, friends. I love you
very much. Tonight when I close my eyes, I'll be with my father. Some
time ago I got a letter, I read it and stuck it in with a bunch of stuff,
and I thought to myself what a cold hearted person. I was asked about the
letter, I spent half the night looking for the letter. A little part of
the letter touched me. Over the years, I have learned to love, God is
everything, God is my life. Tonight I will be with him. I am a parent
myself; I have so much for this dear lady. I understand where they're
coming from, I thought every person was cruel. I love you so, Susan you
know what it is girl, love ya, Maurie appreciate it girl, much love to you
all, Mrs. Cox love you. Momma you are my hero, I wish this world was just
like you. Another mother got hurt, as a parent I understand the pain. That
letter she wrote she wasn't wrong, she was just hurting. She showed God's
love for letting me know that love will be there to welcome me home. I
love you all, I don't know what you are going to feel after tonight. I
love you, I pray one day we will all meet in heaven. A man told me 11
years ago the hardest thing to say is I forgive you. Hope one day we all
be together again. I love you all Susan, Mrs. Cox, Momma, Maurie, Michael.
Grandbabies make the world go around. I love you all. Warden I am looking
to leave tis place on wings of a homesick angel. Ready to go home to meet
my maker. What a friend we have in Jesus, oh my God I lay in awe 'cause I
love you God. I love you momma, I love you Susan."

Palmer also told the women that he knows the pain of losing a parent, a sibling and a child, and that he wished his execution could bring their loved ones back to them.

"I know it can't," he said. "I pray that you have good lives now. I'm sorry."







Scheduled Executions



Preston Hughes - Texas Execution - November 15, 2012



Preston Hughes, who has been on death row for 23 years for fatally stabbing a teenage girl and a toddler, filed suit against the state of Texas over the drug it plans to use to execute him in November, claiming officials are "experimenting" on him and other inmates.

Hughes, 46, is arguing that prison officials, facing a shortage of drugs for the three drug "cocktail" formerly used for lethal injection, did no medical testing before changing the protocol to using a single drug, according to court records.

The execution protocol was changed from a three-drug sequence to a single, lethal dose of pentobarbital in July because TDCJ's stock of the second drug expired and it couldn't get more.


John Ferguson - Florida Execution - October 16, 2012



Florida Gov. Rick Scott is asked a panel of psychiatrists to determine whether a convicted murderer is insane.

Scott on Wednesday agreed to temporarily stay the pending execution of John Errol Ferguson in order to let doctors decide whether or not he understands the death penalty and why he is about to be executed.

The governor in an executive order called for the examination to take place on Oct. 1. Scott says if Ferguson is competent he will proceed with the already-scheduled execution on Oct. 16.

Sixty-four-year-old Ferguson was convicted of murdering six people execution-style in a drug-related crime. Ferguson was also convicted for the murders of two Hialeah teenagers.

Ferguson's attorneys say that he has long exhibited symptoms of schizophrenia and has been plagued by hallucinations and delusions.



New Execution Dates


Bobby Lee Hines - Texas Execution - October 24, 2012



Summary of Offense:

Was convicted in the October 1991 robbery and murder of 26-year-old Michelle Haupt. Haupt was stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick and strangled with a cord inside her Dallas apartment. Four packs of cigarettes, a bowl containing pennies and a gold charm were taken from the apartment. Hines had been staying next door to Haupt in the apartment of the complex's maintenance man who had master keys to all of the units.

Hines was sentenced to death in April 1992.


Arthur Tyler - Ohio Execution - May 28, 2012



On March 12, 1983, Tyler murdered 74-year-old Sander Leach in Cleveland. Mr. Leach sold produce from his van and was the target of an armed robbery, planned by Tyler and his accomplice, Leroy Head. With Head acting as the lookout, Tyler lured Mr. Leach into the back of the van, robbed him and shot him twice. Tyler later admitted to Head and another friend that he murdered Mr. Leach.


William T. Mongomery - Ohio Execution - August 06, 2014



Facts of the Crime:

On March 8, 1986, Montgomery murdered 20-year-old Debra Ogle and 19-year-old Cynthia Tincher. Ms. Ogle and Ms. Tincher were roommates who knew Montgomery. Montgomery asked Ms. Ogle for a ride in her car, took her to a wooded area and shot her three times, point-blank, in the forehead. Montgomery returned to Ms. Ogle's apartment in her car, left with Ms. Tincher in Ms. Tincher's car, had her pull over to the side of the road and shot her at close range. Montgomery received a death sentence for the aggravated murder of Ms. Ogle.


Raymond Tibbetts - Ohio Execution - October 15, 2014



Summary of Offense:

Convicted of the aggravated murders of Judith Sue Crawford and Fred Hicks. He was sentenced to death for Hicks’s murder and life imprisonment without parole for Crawford’s murder.



Stays Of Execution


Terrance Williams - Pennsylvania

On Friday, Philadelphia's top prosecutor vowed to appeal to the state Supreme Court after a judge halted Wednesday's scheduled execution of death row inmate Terrance "Terry" Williams and granted him a new sentencing hearing.

Williams, 46, was convicted in 1986 of fatally beating a man.

Judge M. Teresa Sarmina on Friday halted the execution and said prosecutors suppressed evidence that Williams' victim was an alleged pedophile who abused boys, including Williams. However, Sarmina upheld Williams' first-degree murder conviction.

Williams' lawyers said police and prosecutors withheld evidence about the sexual link between him and victim Amos Norwood, so the jury never heard about it before voting for a death sentence.

District Attorney Seth Williams said he would appeal to the state's highest court. Philadelphia prosecutors deny any wrongdoing in the 1986 trial.

Williams was scheduled to be executed Wednesday. He has also been convicted of third-degree murder for killing another man he claims had abused him.


Garry Thomas Allen - Oklahoma

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt requested an execution date for death row inmate Garry Thomas Allen.

Pruitt asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to set a date on Thursday, a day after a federal judge rejected Allen's request for a hearing on his claim that he is mentally incompetent and ineligible for the death penalty.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge David Russell ruled that Allen had not shown that a jury acted unreasonably when it found Allen sane enough to be executed. Russell also lifted a stay that postponed Allen's execution in April.

Allen entered a blind plea and was sentenced to death for the shooting death of his fiancée, 24-year-old Lawanna Gail Titsworth, in 1986.




Current Death Row Inmates



Armenia Cudjo - California

In Friday's Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinions, the court REVERSED and REMANDED the district court's denial of Cudjo's writ of habeas corpus.




New Death Sentences

Tina Brown - Florida




Reversed/ New Trials/ Resentenced/ Released/ Commuted



Jermaine Wright - Delaware




The Delaware Supreme Court sent back the case of a Delaware death row inmate -- whose conviction was overturned last year – without making a ruling.

In a brief two-page order issued today, the five justices sent the case of Jermaine Wright back to Superior Court Judge John A. Parkins Jr. for additional review on the narrow question of whether the prosecution’s failure to provide certain information to Wright’s attorneys back in 1992 was a material violation or a harmless oversight.

In January, Parkins tossed out Wright’s 20 year-old conviction and death sentence for the slaying of disabled liquor store clerk Phillip Siefert. He ruled that Wright’s confession was inadmissible – due to the fact Wright had not properly been read his rights and due to Wright’s apparent drug intoxication during the interview -- and that prosecutors improperly withheld information from the defense.

The Delaware Supreme Court heard an appeal from prosecutors in June, seeking to restore the conviction and death sentence, and then made the unusual request for additional briefing from attorneys few weeks later. At that time, the justices asked attorneys to assume that the confession was admissible and focus on the failure of prosecutors to provide information to the defense – the same issue that the court is now asking Parkins to investigate further.

The information in question relates to a similar liquor store robbery on the same night Seifert was killed that might have led a jury to believe that Wright was innocent and that someone else may have been responsible for Seifert’s slaying.

The state’s strongest evidence against Wright at trial was his confession and if Parkins’ January ruling is upheld, it is nearly certain that Wright – who had been Delaware’s longest-serving death row inmate – would be set free.


Christopher Floyd - Alabama

On Friday, The Alabama Supreme Court asked two lower courts to reexamine their decisions upholding the death sentence of Christopher Anthony Floyd for the 1992 robbery and shooting of a worker at an Ashford store.

The Supreme Court reversed a decision of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upholding the capital murder conviction and death sentence of the 40-year-old Floyd.

Floyd was sentenced to die for the 1992 robbery and shooting death of Waylon Crawford during a robbery at a small store he and his wife ran in Houston County. Floyd was 19 at the time of the shooting.

The Supreme Court asked the Court of Criminal Appeals and the trial judge in Houston County to reconsider whether prosecutors had adequate reasons for eliminating black people and women from the jury.


Ralph Thomas - California


A judge Thursday ordered a psychiatric examination for a man who was convicted of murdering two Grateful Dead followers at a homeless encampment in Berkeley in 1985 but recently won the right to a new trial.

Ralph International Thomas, now 58, is charged with murdering Mary Gioia, 22, and Greg Kniffin, 18, early the morning of Aug. 16, 1985, at the encampment near the Berkeley Marina, which was set up by the city of Berkeley and called the Rainbow Village.

The two victims were beaten and shot at close range with a high-powered rifle and their bodies were found later that day in the San Francisco Bay near the Berkeley Marina.

Thomas was scheduled to enter a plea, but nothing has been simple in the long-running case, which has been the subject of numerous appellate rulings since he was convicted of two counts of murder plus the special circumstance of committing multiple murders and sentenced to the death penalty at his trial in Alameda County Superior Court in 1986.

Judge Carrie Panetta suspended Thomas' case after defense attorney Susan Walsh said she wasn't ready for him to enter a plea because she has concerns about whether he is competent to stand trial based on her recent conversations with him.

Three psychiatrists will now examine Thomas and their findings will be presented at a hearing in Panetta's courtroom on Nov. 15.


Damon Thibodeaux - Louisiana



Damon Thibodeaux. Photo courtesy the Innocence Project Chicago, ILL.




A Louisiana death-row inmate convicted of the rape and murder of his 14-year-old step-cousin in 1996 on Friday became the 300th person exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence in the United States — and the 18th death-row inmate saved from execution by DNA.

Damon Thibodeaux, now 38, confessed to the brutal attack on his cousin after a nine-hour interrogation in 1996 by detectives from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. He recanted a few hours later and has maintained since that his confession was coerced. Despite his recantation, Thibodeaux was indicted four days after his arrest. In 1997, a jury found him guilty of murder and rape, largely on the basis of his confession. He was sentenced to death



Jury Recommended Death Sentences


Thomas Crowe - Alabama

Rickie Lee Fowler - California




State By State Death Penalty News



Arizona


A federal judge gave state officials and lawyers for death-row inmates more time to try to settle a lawsuit challenging Arizona's execution procedures.

District Judge Neil Wake's order Tuesday grants the sides until Oct. 26 to settle the case, have it dismissed or proceed toward trial.

The sides had faced a Friday deadline but they asked for more time to discuss recent revisions to the Department of Correction's written procedures to reflect changes already implemented.

Those changes include allowing execution witnesses to see injection lines being inserted into the inmate and using only one execution drug.

The case centers on inmates' claims that their constitutional rights to protection against cruel and unusual punishment could be put at risk by how the state conducts executions.


Kentucky

Critics of Kentucky's proposed new death penalty method asked officials to make multiple changes to how executions are carried out now that the state is switching to a one- or two-drug lethal injection.

During a hearing Tuesday morning in Frankfort, public defenders, private attorneys and anti-death penalty activists said the rules Kentucky wants to put in place have multiple problems, including that condemned inmates aren't allowed access to their attorneys on the day of execution.

Kentucky is trying to switch to a method similar to the one used by other states. A judge invalidated the three-drug lethal injection process earlier this year.

Officials say they could ask a judge by early next year to lift an injunction barring executions and for approval of the new method.