Yesterday Virginia executed 41-year-old Teresa Lewis. For her last meal, she requested "two fried chicken breasts, sweet peas with butter, a piece of German cake or apple pie for dessert, and a Dr. Pepper." What would you choose?
Good news for criminals in China: The government has proposed dropping the death penalty for several crimes, such as smuggling exotic animals and relics. And no more elderly executions, either. Currently, 68 crimes are punishable by death in China.
Today we talked about the execution of a Utah man and how it got Tweeted by the state's attorney general. Naturally this prompted death penalty discussions. One commenter summed their philosophy up nicely.
Houston attorney Jerry Guerinot has a bad track record of defending capital murder cases in Texas: 20 of his clients have been executed. But he says judges give him the toughest cases: "The easy ones, somehow, never came to me."
A death row inmate, when given the choice between execution by lethal injection or firing squad, wants the latter. He is one of four condemned prisoners in Utah who have asked for the option. State politicians fear a spectacle.