|
SOUTH DAKOTA (USA): DONALD MOELLER EXECUTED
October 30, 2012: Donald Moeller, 60, white, was executed in South Dakota. Moeller was given a lethal injection for the 1990 rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl, Becky O'Connell.
Moeller kidnapped the girl from a convenience store where she'd gone to buy sugar to make lemonade. Her naked body was found the next day; she had been stabbed and her throat was slashed. Moeller initially was convicted in 1992, but the state Supreme Court overturned it, ruling that improper evidence was used at trial. He was again convicted and sentenced to die in 1997. Executions are rare in South Dakota, which has carried out death sentences just three times since the 1913 hanging of Joseph Rickman for the murder of a woman and her daughter.
Moeller becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in South Dakota, the 3rd overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 2007, the 34th to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1311th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (Sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin, 30/10/2012)
|
