execution

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — The son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as family members of a condemned Alabama inmate, are asking the governor to to stop the execution of the man who's convicted in the 2004 killing of three police officers but wasn't the trigger man.

Nathaniel Woods is scheduled to be executed by injection on March 5 at a south Alabama prison. Woods and co-defendant Kerry Spencer were convicted of capital murder for the 2004 killings of three Birmingham police officers.

ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — A man condemned for his role in a quadruple killing that followed a dispute over a pickup truck was put to death Thursday in Alabama after declining to make any last-minute appeals.

Michael Brandon Samra, 41, was pronounced dead at 7:33 p.m. following a three-drug lethal injection at Holman prison, authorities said.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A man convicted of killing four people, including two young girls, in a dispute over a pickup truck is set for execution Thursday evening in Alabama.

Michael Brandon Samra, 41, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at the state prison at Atmore.

Samra and a friend, Mark Duke, were convicted of capital murder in the deaths of Duke's father, the father's girlfriend and the woman's two elementary-age daughters in 1997. The two adults were shot and the children had their throats slit.

ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama inmate convicted in the 1991 sword-and-dagger slaying of a pastor has been spared a lethal injection. His death warrant expired two hours before a divided U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay of his execution early Friday.

A federal judge had stayed the execution of Christopher Lee Price on Thursday to weigh his challenge to Alabama's execution process. Alabama now must seek a new execution date from a state court.

"This evening, the state of Alabama witnessed a miscarriage of justice," Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement.

A federal appeals court has blocked the planned execution of an Alabama inmate to consider whether the state was violating the Muslim inmate's rights by not allowing an imam to replace a Christian prison chaplain in the death chamber.

The 11th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay for 42-year-old Dominique Ray, a day before his scheduled execution for the slaying of a teenager more than two decades ago. The Alabama attorney general's office had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the stay and let the execution proceed Thursday night.

A man convicted of killing his former boss at a traveling carnival nearly two decades ago was put to death last night after having dropped his appeals and asking courts to execute him.

50-year-old Michael Wayne Eggers died at 7:29 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection at a southwest Alabama prison. He was sentenced to death for the murder of his former employer Bennie Francis Murray in 2000. Prosecutors say Eggers admitted to strangling Murray during an argument.

Alabama inmate Vernon Madison was scheduled to be put to death last night at 6 p.m., but he is still alive this morning.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution last night in order to consider arguments from the 67-year-old inmate’s attorneys. Madison had been sentenced to death for the 1985 killing of Mobile police officer Julius Schulte. In the three decades since, Madison’s lawyers say he’s suffered multiple strokes and now has vascular dementia. That has left him unable to remember the crime he committed or understand his looming execution.

Alabama’s Department of Corrections is scheduled to execute 40-year-old Torrey Twane McNabb this evening. But as of now, a stay on that execution remains in place.

Yesterday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the stay to allow for additional proceedings in McNabb’s lawsuit. He and other Alabama death row inmates are challenging the constitutionality of the state’s lethal injection protocol. Specifically, they argue the sedative midazolam can be ineffective, and might not render them unconscious before other drugs stop their lungs and heart.

The state of Alabama is asking the U.S. Supreme Court for permission to proceed with the execution of a man convicted of killing his estranged wife and father-in-law back in 1993.

Yesterday, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the nation's high court to overturn an injunction currently blocking Thursday's scheduled execution of 56-year-old Jeffery Lynn Borden.

Alabama's prison commissioner says there were no visible signs that an inmate suffered during an execution last night.

Commissioner Jeff Dunn issued the statement Friday on the execution of inmate Ronald Bert Smith Jr.

Dunn says Smith coughed early in the execution Thursday night, "but at no time ...was there observational evidence that he suffered."

Alabama has adopted a new combination of drugs for executions and is once again seeking to put inmates to death.

The attorney general's office is asking the Alabama Supreme Court to set execution dates for nine death row inmates. Lawyers said the Department of Corrections this week adopted a new three-drug protocol for executions.

Executions in Alabama had come to a halt after Alabama and other states ran out of a key drug used in executions.

Gov. Robert Bentley says he's against switching back to the electric chair to resume executions in Alabama.

Speaking in Shelby County on Monday, Bentley said he's personally opposed to the idea of resuming electrocutions.

A key legislator on prison issues, state Sen. Cam Ward, says giving up the state's current method of lethal injection involves too many legal hurdles.

The state attorney general's office says executions are at a standstill because the prison system has run out of one of the three drugs used in its lethal injection system.

Andrew Lackey's execution late last month was the first in Alabama since 2011, when the state had six executions.

Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw says executions have slowed because of challenges to the way Alabama conducts executions.

Bryan Stevenson of Montgomery is an anti-death penalty attorney, and he says challenges have included questions about the drugs used. Attorneys say courts allowed Lackey's execution to proceed mainly because he had dropped his appeals. They say they expect legal challenges to continue to slow the overall pace of Alabama executions.

Family members of convicted murderer Andrew Lackey visited with him briefly at Holman Prison in Atmore Tuesday, two days before his scheduled execution Thursday.

Prisons spokesman Brian Corbett said the 30-year-old Lackey was moved at 4 p.m. Tuesday into a holding cell near the death chamber at Holman, where a lethal injection is scheduled to be administered at 6 p.m. Thursday.

Corbett said Lackey's mother, father, aunt and brother visited for about an hour and a half Tuesday.

Lackey would be the first person executed in Alabama in almost two years.