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Death-row senior becomes second-oldest executed in U.S.
Last Updated Tue, 17 Jan 2006 08:29:39 EST
CBC News
California executed a 76-year-old legally blind, nearly deaf man convicted of arranging a triple murder 25 years ago to silence witnesses in another killing.
Clarence Ray Allen was pronounced dead by lethal injection shortly after midnight at San Quentin State Prison.
His lawyers sought to have the capital punishment stayed by arguing that executing a wheelchair-bound, frail old man would violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They also argued that the 23 years he spent on death row were unconstitutionally cruel.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Supreme Court and a federal appeals court previously refused to spare Allen's life. There is no upper age limit or exceptions on the basis of physical infirmity for executions.
Allen was convicted of having his teenage son's girlfriend murdered for fear she would tell police about a grocery-store burglary he committed in 1974. While behind bars, he tried to arrange for the deaths of eight other witnesses in the case, prosecutors said.
His intention was to gain a retrial, which he believed he could win if no witnesses were alive, so he hired a hit man and three people were killed. He was sentenced to death in 1982 in that conspiracy.
In September, the elderly convict's heart stopped, but prison doctors revived him and returned him to San Quentin's death row.
Allen was the second oldest U.S. inmate to be put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capitalpunishment to resume in 1976. Last month in Mississippi, John B. Nixon, 77, became the oldest person executed in the United States.
Link
He did the crime, old or not, he got what was coming.
Last Updated Tue, 17 Jan 2006 08:29:39 EST
CBC News
California executed a 76-year-old legally blind, nearly deaf man convicted of arranging a triple murder 25 years ago to silence witnesses in another killing.
Clarence Ray Allen was pronounced dead by lethal injection shortly after midnight at San Quentin State Prison.
His lawyers sought to have the capital punishment stayed by arguing that executing a wheelchair-bound, frail old man would violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They also argued that the 23 years he spent on death row were unconstitutionally cruel.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Supreme Court and a federal appeals court previously refused to spare Allen's life. There is no upper age limit or exceptions on the basis of physical infirmity for executions.
Allen was convicted of having his teenage son's girlfriend murdered for fear she would tell police about a grocery-store burglary he committed in 1974. While behind bars, he tried to arrange for the deaths of eight other witnesses in the case, prosecutors said.
His intention was to gain a retrial, which he believed he could win if no witnesses were alive, so he hired a hit man and three people were killed. He was sentenced to death in 1982 in that conspiracy.
In September, the elderly convict's heart stopped, but prison doctors revived him and returned him to San Quentin's death row.
Allen was the second oldest U.S. inmate to be put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capitalpunishment to resume in 1976. Last month in Mississippi, John B. Nixon, 77, became the oldest person executed in the United States.
Link
He did the crime, old or not, he got what was coming.
