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VIRGINIA (USA): RICKY GRAY EXECUTED
January 18, 2017: Ricky Gray was executed. Gray, 39, Black, was sentenced to death for the 2006 New Year's Day murders of sisters Ruby, 4, and Stella, 9. Gray also killed the girls' parents and another Richmond family.
It appeared to take an inordinately long time - more than a half-hour - to place the IV lines and do other procedures behind a curtain that blocks the view of witnesses.
At the conclusion of the execution, a physician came out from behind the curtain and listened to Gray's chest for a heartbeat.
Gray was sentenced to die for the Jan. 1, 2006, slayings of Ruby Harvey, 4, and Stella Harvey, 9. He and accomplice Ray Dandridge, 39, also killed their parents, Bryan Harvey, 49, and Kathryn Harvey, 39, in their home.
A few days later, Gray and Dandridge killed Ashley Baskerville, 21; Baskerville's mother, Mary Tucker, 47; and stepfather, Percyell Tucker, 55, in their home.
The Tucker/Baskerville slayings were discovered on Jan. 6. Dandridge, Gray's nephew, was sentenced to life for those killings.
Police arrested Gray and Dandridge in Philadelphia on Jan. 7. Gray soon confessed. He also admitted he had murdered his wife, Treva Gray, in Pennsylvania in November 2005.
Gray's clemency petition to McAuliffe cited his physical and sexual abuse suffered as a child that led to his addiction to PCP, a drug his lawyers said he was high on while committing the murders. Outside Greensville Correctional Center on Wednesday evening, a half-dozen members of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty gathered with about 20 of Gray's family members to hold a vigil as the man was executed.
Gray becomes the 1st inmate to be put to death this year in Virginia, and the 112th execution in Virginia since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in 1976.
Gray becomes the 2nd inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1444th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (Sources: Richmond Times-Dispatch & Rick Halperin, 18/01/2017)
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