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TEXAS (USA): LESTER BOWER EXECUTED AFTER THREE DECADES ON DEATH ROW
June 3, 2015: Lester Bower, 67, White, was executed. A Texas jury sentenced Bower to death in April 1984 for the Oct. 8, 1983 fatal shootings of four men at an airplane hangar north of Dallas. Prosecutors said he had earlier stolen an aircraft from one of his victims. Those killed were Bob Tate, 51; Grayson County Sheriff's Deputy Philip Good, 29, Jerry Brown, 52, and Ronald Mayes, 39, a former Sherman police officer. He has always maintained his innocence and had appeals pending for the vast majority of his three decades behind bars.
Bower is the oldest inmate executed in Texas since the state resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1982. Bower becomes the eighth person to be executed in Texas this year.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which earlier this year struggled to find enough supply of the lethal injection chemical pentobarbital, told The Huffington Post in a Wednesday statement: The Texas Department of Criminal Justice obtained a supply of pentobarbital on April 28th which will allow the agency to carry out all of the executions that are currently scheduled. The drugs were purchased from a licensed pharmacy that has the ability to compound.
Bower becomes the 8th inmate to be put to death this year in Texas, the 526th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982, the 15th inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1409th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. There were 20 executions in the USA last year by this date. (Sources: Associated Press, huffingtonpost.com, 03/06/2015)
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