Category: execution

Nevada’s First Execution in Nearly 16 Years on Hold Again

LAS VEGAS—Nevada’s first execution in nearly 16 years is on hold again after the state’s lawyers told a federal judge on Monday they couldn’t possibly satisfy the legal requirements necessary to put Zane Michael Floyd to death before April. “It would be impossible,” Randall Gilmer, chief deputy Nevada attorney general, told U.S. District Judge Richard…


Alabama Inmate Executed After Supreme Court Clears Way

A death row inmate was put to death late Thursday after the Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling, clearing the way for the execution. Death row inmate Matthew Reeves, 43, was pronounced dead at 9:24 p.m. CST after being administered a lethal injection, state Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. The nation’s high…


US Supreme Court Declines to Halt Pending Oklahoma Execution

OKLAHOMA CITY—The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request from a death row inmate in Oklahoma to stop his upcoming lethal injection. In a brief order, the court indicated 46-year-old Donald Grant’s application for a temporary stay of execution was denied. The decision paves the way for Grant to receive a lethal injection at…


Man Admits to Another Killing Just Before Execution

JACKSON, Miss.—A man who was executed in Mississippi last month for killing his estranged wife admitted to another killing, and his confession could resolve a 2007 cold case, a prosecutor said Monday. Before his execution on Nov. 17, David Neal Cox told his attorneys he killed his sister-in-law Felicia Cox in 2007 and provided detailed…


Alabama Inmate Who Survived Execution Attempt Dies of Cancer

MONTGOMERY, Ala.—An Alabama inmate whose lethal injection was halted because medical staff couldn’t find a suitable vein for the execution has died of natural causes almost four years later, his lawyer said Monday. Doyle Lee Hamm, who was convicted in the slaying of a motel clerk in 1987, died of natural causes on death row,…


Mississippi Executes Man Who Killed Wife, Terrorized Family

PARCHMAN, Miss.— A man who pleaded guilty to killing his estranged wife and sexually assaulting her young daughter as her mother lay dying was put to death Wednesday evening, becoming the first inmate executed in Mississippi in nine years. David Neal Cox, 50, abandoned all appeals and filed court papers calling himself “worthy of death”…


Death Row Inmate Seeks Execution; Judge to Decide Competency

JACKSON, Miss.—A Mississippi judge will decide whether a death row inmate who says he wants to be executed is mentally competent to waive all his appeals. The state Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the examination in the case of David Cox. Cox wrote to Mississippi Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr. in August saying he wanted…


Oklahoma Executes Death Row Inmate, First Time in 6 Years

Oklahoma carried out the first execution in the state in six years on Thursday to a death row inmate. John Marion Grant, 60, was executed via lethal injection with a three-drug cocktail. He convulsed and vomited before he was declared unconscious about 15 minutes after the first of three drugs—the sedative midazolam—was administered. He was declared dead…


Oklahoma Must Postpone Execution Set for Thursday, Court Rules

Oklahoma must postpone the executions of John Grant and Julius Jones while a legal challenge to the state’s lethal injection protocol is adjudicated, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled on Wednesday. The execution of Grant, which was scheduled for 4 p.m. on Thursday, will now only…


Alabama Man Executed for 1991 Murder of Woman

ATMORE, Ala.—An Alabama man who avoided execution in February was put to death Thursday for the 1991 murder of a woman who was abducted during a robbery and then shot in a cemetery. Willie B. Smith III, 52, received a lethal injection at a prison in southwest Alabama. He was pronounced dead at 9:47 p.m….