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ALABAMA (USA): INMATE EXECUTED AFTER TEMPORARY HALT
January 13, 2011: a convicted murderer was executed in Alabama after the US Supreme Court denied a stay of execution for the man accused of killing his wife as she held their young child in her arms.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had issued a temporary stay in order to give the court more time to review the case's legal arguments shortly before Leroy White was scheduled to die.
But the High Court later denied the request for a stay and White, 51, was put to death by lethal injection at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
He had spent 22 years on death row.
White was 29 years old in October 1988, when he murdered his wife with two gunshots because she wanted a separation.
His lawyers said he did not have adequate representation and should have had the opportunity to plead guilty to get life without parole, in order to avoid the death penalty.
"Mr White's execution marks another step back from the commitment to heightened scrutiny and fair review that states and courts promised when the death penalty was reintroduced 35 years ago,'' White's lawyer Bryan Stevenson said in a statement.
"Today's execution further demonstrates how capital punishment in this country has become arbitrary, unreliable and a sentence carried out mostly against those too poor, disabled and vulnerable to avoid lethal vengeance.''
The family of the victim opposed the execution, according to Stevenson.
Two executions have been carried out in the US since the start of 2011, after 45 last year and 52 in 2009.
In Alabama alone, 203 prisoners are on death row. (Sources: Afp, 13/01/2011)
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