After a week of legal filings and calls from hate crime victim Rais Bhuiyan for compassion, mercy, and a commutation for his attacker, Mark Stroman was executed in Huntsville, this evening.
"Texas man executed for killing store clerk," is the AP report, via Forbes.
Mark Stroman, 41, was lethally injected shortly after his final court appeal was rejected. He was pronounced dead at 8:53 p.m. at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit.
And:
The execution was briefly delayed as the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals considered a final appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals earlier Wednesday.
In an unusual step, Bhuiyan had asked the courts to halt Stroman's execution. The native of Bangladesh and a former convenience store worker lost the sight in one of his eyes when Stroman shot him in the face.
He also said he wanted to spend time with the convict to learn more about why the shootings occurred.
"Killing him is not the solution," Bhuiyan said. "He's learning from his mistake. If he's given a chance, he's able to reach out to others and spread that message to others."
A federal district judge in Austin rejected the suit and Bhuiyan's request for an injunction on Wednesday afternoon. His lawyers appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Justice Antonin Scalia turned it down.
Stroman's lawyer, in a separate appeal to the Supreme Court, pointed to Bhuiyan's "significant surprise" and argued that attorneys during Stroman's trial and in earlier stages of his appeals were deficient for not illustrating "the path that led him to this violent frenzy."
Earlier coverage begins at the link.
Georgia's execution of Andrew DeYoung, scheduled for tonight, has been reset for tomorrow.
ABC News reports, "Videotaped Executionby Lethal Injection Set for Thursday."
The Georgia Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Fulton County, Ga., judge's order to videotape an execution, but that execution was postponed until Thursday evening.
This is thought to be the first time a lethal injection will be recorded and the first time in almost two decades that an execution will be recorded.
The original decision to videotape the execution came after attorneys claimed that one of the drugs administered in the lethal injection may cause unnecessary suffering.
Andrew Grant DeYoung, 37, had been scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. for the 1993 murders of his sister and parents, but the execution did not occur on schedule as appeals worked their way through the courts.
After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the case late Wednesday, Georgia prison officials delayed the execution until Thursday at 7 p.m. Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens would not say why the execution was rescheduled, according to The Associated Press.
Earlier coverage of lethal injection issues from Georgia begins at the link
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