Cases and articles

Flurry of legal maneuvers fails to derail death sentence

By SHEILA BURKE, BRAD SCHRADE and SHEILA WISSNER
Staff Writers

The state executed condemned cop killer Philip Workman in a West Nashville prison early today in the third death sentence carried out in Tennessee in 47 years.

Workman, 53, was pronounced dead at 1:38 a.m. after a lethal cocktail of drugs was injected into his body as he lay strapped to a prison gurney at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

Chicago Tribune

 About once a week, a convicted murderer is put to death in a state penitentiary, most often in Texas, where all but one of this year's 12 executions have occurred.

But around the U.S., capital punishment is under siege. Since the first of the year, individual states have acted on long festering questions about the equity of capital punishment and made bold moves aimed at repealing the death penalty, slowing the practice or temporarily halting it because of rising costs.

Exclusive By Gavin Engelbrecht

THE family of a man who could face the death penalty in the US told last night of their belief in his innocence.

Neil Revill, 34, from Consett, County Durham, will stand trial in August for the double murder of drug dealer Arthur Davodian, 22, and Kimberley Crayton, 21, in Los Angeles in 2001

By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Published: 05 April 2007
A naturalised Briton who suffered brain damage in the Vietnam War will be shot by firing squad unless Tony Blair intervenes in his appeal, according to lawyers representing him.

Le Manh Luong, 47, a mechanic who used to live in Greenwich, south London, was sentenced to death in Vietnam after being convicted of masterminding a drug-smuggling operation.

But medical evidence obtained by a UK-based rights charity, Reprieve, shows Luong would have been incapable of playing a pivotal role in such a crime.