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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. 

Oklahoma: Terry Lyn Short executed

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McALESTER (AP) - An Oklahoma man convicted of killing a university student from Japan by throwing a firebomb into his apartment complex has been put to death.

Terry Lyn Short was injected with a lethal combination of three chemicals Tuesday evening at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie says Short was pronounced dead at 6:08 p.m.

The 47-year-old Short was the first person executed in Oklahoma since Aug. 21, when Frank Duane Welch was executed for the killing of a Norman woman.

Executions had been put on hold across the country for part of the 10 months in between as the U.S. Supreme Court considered a challenge to the lethal injection procedure.

Short was convicted of killing 22-year-old Ken Yamamoto in 1995. Yamamoto lived one floor above Short's ex-girlfriend and died after Short threw a gasoline-filled bottle into her apartment that ignited the building.

Source: Associated Press
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