The Fayetteville (NC) Observer has, "Army: Gray execution months away." Henry Cuningham reports that five others are on the military's death row.
The execution of Ronald Adrin Gray will not take place for at least two months, probably much longer, Army officials said Tuesday.
President Bush on Monday approved the execution of Gray, a former 82nd Airborne Division cook convicted of murder and rape in 1988 in a Fort Bragg court-martial.
At Fort Bragg, he was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
Gray was notified of the signed execution order Monday. Before reaching the president, Gray’s case exhausted military appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his petition for a rehearing in 2001. In addition to his military convictions, Gray pleaded guilty in Cumberland County Superior Court to 22 felonies, including murder and rape, for serial crimes committed in Fairlane Acres Mobile Home City near Fort Bragg.
“Our regulations do not allow an execution to occur sooner than 60 days after approval by the president,” said Lt. Col. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman at the Pentagon.
The secretary of the Army must set the date for the execution, she said.
Under Army regulations, lethal injection is the approved method of execution, Edgecomb said.
If there is a stay — an official postponement — of execution, then the next date should be no sooner than 14 days but no later than 30 days after the stay of execution is lifted, she said.
The last execution was four years after President Eisenhower approved the sentence, she said. John A. Bennett was hanged April 13, 1961, for the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old Austrian girl.
"Death-row inmate at Fort Leavenworth learns his time is running out," is the Kansas City Star article, by Dawn Bormann.
Fort Leavenworth officials said they did not expect any immediate action. It could be years before Gray exhausts all of his appeal rights, Marcec said.
Gray is one of six men on death row at the Disciplinary Barracks, the military’s only maximum-security prison.
Gray was convicted in April 1988 at Fort Bragg, N.C., of two murders, attempted murder and other charges. He also was convicted in civilian court of two murders and five rapes.
Where Gray would be executed is unclear. The last military execution was carried out at Fort Leavenworth in 1961 when John A. Bennett was hanged.
Recent military changes have opened the door for executions at other federal facilities.
And much has changed since 1961 at the Disciplinary Barracks. The Army opened a new prison in 2002. And although Army officials designated a space for an execution chamber, they stopped short of immediately equipping the area for the military’s present method of execution, lethal injection.
CAAFlog has, "Number of military execution in the UCMJ era." Earlier coverage is here.
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