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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Texas executes Michael James Perry

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HUNTSVILLE — Convicted killer Michael James Perry (left) has been executed for gunning down a nurse at her home north of Houston and stealing her red convertible nine years ago.

Perry, 28, mouthed to relatives and friends watching through a window that he loved them.

"I want to start off to everyone involved in this atrocity, they're all forgiven by me," he said in a brief statement from the death chamber gurney.

He lifted his head from the pillow and, his voice cracking, cried out: "Mom, I love you."

"I'm coming home, Dad. I'm coming home," he added. His father died last month.

He never acknowledged relatives of the nurse, Sandra Stotler, who looked through an adjacent window.

As the drugs took effect, a single tear ran down his right cheek, prompting quiet sobs from his mother and an aunt and friends.

He was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m., the 14th prisoner executed this year in Texas, the nation's most active death penalty state.

His lethal injection came about 90 minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-day appeal. Perry's lawyers argued they had new evidence showing Perry was already in jail when Sandra Stotler, 50, was murdered in 2001 at her home near Conroe. They also contended a friend of Perry's killed Stotler.

Source: AP, July 1, 2010
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