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U.S. | 'I comfort death row inmates in their final moments - the execution room is like a house of horrors'

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Reverend Jeff Hood, 40, wants to help condemned inmates 'feel human again' and vows to continue his efforts to befriend murderers in spite of death threats against his family A reverend who has made it his mission to comfort death row inmates in their final days has revealed the '"moral torture" his endeavor entails. Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood, 40, lives with his wife and five children in Little Rock, Arkansas. But away from his normal home life, he can suddenly find himself holding the shoulder of a murderer inside an execution chamber, moments away from the end of their life. 

Texas: Execution Date Set for Mexican

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A Mexican-born prisoner whose death sentence set off an international dispute and a Supreme Court rebuke of the White House received an execution date of Aug. 5. The prisoner, José E. Medellín, was sentenced to death by lethal injection for his participation in the gang rape and strangulation deaths of two teenage girls 15 years ago in Houston when they stumbled upon a gang initiation rite.

The Supreme Court in March refused to hear Mr. Medellín’s appeal, saying President Bush overstepped his authority by ordering Texas to reopen his case and the cases of 50 other Mexican citizens condemned for murders in the United States.

Texas refused to comply. During Mr. Bush’s six-year tenure as Texas governor, 152 inmates went to the state’s death chamber, the nation’s busiest. But he took the side of Mr. Medellín and 50 other Mexican citizens on death rows around the country after the International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that their convictions violated the 1963 Vienna Convention, which provides that people arrested abroad should have access to their home country’s consular officials. The international court said the Mexican prisoners should have new court hearings to determine whether the violations affected their cases. The Supreme Court said Texas could ignore the world court.

Source: The New York Times

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U.S. | 'I comfort death row inmates in their final moments - the execution room is like a house of horrors'

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