News

Sedley Alley is headed to "death watch" after a federal appeals court lifted a stay Friday night that could have spared him from execution.

The ruling by a panel of judges on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will be appealed to the full court as early as this morning, said Kelley Henry, an assistant federal public defender in Nashville who represents Alley.

A condemned inmate asked prison officials to find another way to execute him as they struggled to administer a lethal injection after an intravenous line failed, prison records show.

(AP) -- We hear it after a smoky blaze that destroys a house, or an all-night warehouse inferno: The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Now those investigations themselves are getting a hard look, including the case of a Texas man executed two years ago for a house fire that killed his three little girls.

Fire experts say he was wrongfully convicted because junk science was accepted as expert testimony.

John Spirko was supposed to be dead. Kenneth Richey was to have a new trial and possibly be a free man by now. Richard Joseph was to leave death row with the chance to someday walk out of prison a free man.

But the 3 men remain on Ohio's death row despite rulings last year in their favor. Richey was granted a new trial and Joseph's death sentence was overturned. The governor spared Spirko's life several times to allow for DNA testing that didnt exist at the time of his crime.