Missouri executes David Hosier

David Hosier, who maintained innocence in 2009 murders of Angela and Rodney Gilpin, pronounced dead at 6.11pm

Missouri executed a man on death row on Tuesday night, the state’s second lethal injection carried out this year.

David Hosier, 69, was pronounced dead at 6.11pm following a single-dose injection of the sedative pentobarbital at the state prison in Bonne Terre, said Missouri corrections department spokeswoman Karen Pojmann via text message.

Hosier has maintained his innocence in the 2009 murders of a couple, Angela and Rodney Gilpin, and two Missouri Congress members called for the execution to be halted earlier this week.

“I’ve been able to speak the truth of my innocence,” Hosier said in a written statement before his execution, NBC News reported. “I’ve been able to reminisce with family and friends new and old. I’ve been able to learn to be the fullest version of me … I leave you all with love.”

Hosier has acknowledged that he had an affair with Angela Gilpin, telling the Associated Press that she ended the relationship and got back together with her husband. The couple was fatally shot near the doorway of their apartment in Jefferson City, the state capital, in September 2009.

Police said Hosier had made comments threatening to kill Angela Gilpin prior to the shooting and that authorities later found in the woman’s purse an application for a protective order that referenced fears Hosier could harm her and her husband.

Hosier was arrested in Oklahoma and had weapons in his car, though ballistic tests on the weapons were inconclusive.

Lawyers for Hosier focused on the defendant’s traumatic childhood in his clemency petition, which Missouri governor Mike Parson rejected on Monday. The petition noted that Hosier’s father, Glen Hosier, was murdered when he was 16 years old. His father was a detective sergeant with the Indiana state police and was fatally shot on the job by a man he was trying to arrest.

Hosier previously served in the US Navy and worked as a firefighter and EMT. His lawyers noted that prosecutors had at one point offered a plea deal for life in prison without parole: “It seems that if the prosecutor thought such a sentence was appropriate given all the facts, such a sentence should now be seriously considered,” the clemency petition said.

In recent interviews with the AP and NBC News, Hosier has criticized his lawyers for focusing on his childhood, saying he had asked them to prioritize his innocence claim, including the lack of DNA evidence at the crime scene: “I will maintain that ’till the day they stick a needle in my arm and kill me. I’ll still be innocent, even though I’m dead,” he told the news station.

Larry Komp, one of Hosier’s federal public defenders, criticized the governor’s decision to allow the execution to move forward, saying in a statement: “It sends the wrong message to execute and marginalize a veteran and an individual harmed by the tragedy of his father being killed in the line of duty, which spun his life into a different direction. The context of his life history with the paucity of evidence related to his guilt makes this a compounding of tragedies, nothing is gained by killing him.”

The Republican governor, a former sheriff, has overseen ten executions since 2018. In a statement on Monday, Parson said Hosier “displays no remorse for his senseless violence”, adding: “For these heinous acts, Hosier earned maximum punishment under the law.”

The execution follows the widely criticized lethal injection of Brian Dorsey in Missouri in April. Dorsey was sentenced to death for murdering his cousin and her husband in 2006, but his clemency petition was supported by more than 70 current and former prison staff, Republican lawmakers, jurors and an appeals judge who had upheld the death sentence. That judge said he regretted his decision.

A total of 24 people were executed in the US last year, with capital punishments carried out in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma and Alabama. A Gallup poll last year found that half of Americans now believe the death penalty is carried out unfairly in the US.

Source: The Guardian, Sam Levin, The Associated Press, June 12, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________

Twitter/X | Facebook | Telegram | Contact Us

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Tennessee | Questions Raised About the Doctor Who Was Overseeing Tony Caruthers’ Execution

Mark Fowler, according to a deposition, had not placed a central line in a patient for more than a decade when he attempted to put one in Carruthers Around 11 a.m. Thursday morning in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a medical doctor stepped in and attempted to place a central IV line in Tony Carruthers’ chest. By that point, the prison staff had spent some 30 minutes trying unsuccessfully to insert a backup IV line that would allow them to proceed with the lethal injection. According to Carruthers’ attorney Maria DeLiberato, who was in the room, after asking a staff member to attempt inserting a line through Carruthers’ jugular vein, the doctor moved on to the central line, which is identified as the last resort in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol .

EU GSP+ Reform: Will Brussels Finally Enforce Its Own Conditions on Pakistan?

The EU has tightened the rules governing GSP+ trade preferences, but Pakistan’s record raises a harder question: whether Brussels is prepared to suspend market access when a major beneficiary fails to demonstrate sustained compliance with human rights, labour and governance obligations. The European Union has formally adopted revised rules for its Generalised Scheme of Preferences, strengthening the conditions attached to preferential market access for developing countries. The new framework will apply from 1 January 2027 and is intended to tighten monitoring, widen the list of international conventions, and make suspension of benefits easier in cases of serious violations.

Florida executes Richard Knight

Man convicted of killing a woman and her 4-year-old daughter is executed in Florida A Florida man convicted of fatally stabbing his cousin’s girlfriend and the couple’s 4-year-old daughter was put to death Thursday evening, becoming the 7th person executed by the state this year. Richard Knight, 47, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Knight was convicted of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in the June 2002 killings of Odessia Stephens and her daughter, Hanessia Mullings. The curtain of the death chamber went up promptly at the scheduled 6:00 p.m. execution time. Knight was already strapped down with his arms extended and an IV line in place.

Iran executes Esma Zarei in Ardabil Prison after she gave birth in custody

Hengaw – Saturday, May 23, 2026. Iranian authorities have executed Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Turkish woman from Parsabad in Ardabil Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of her husband. She is the sixth woman executed in Iran since the beginning of 2026. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Zarei was executed at dawn on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Ardabil Central Prison. She had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) after being convicted of her husband’s murder.

Tennessee fails to execute Tony Carruthers after IV difficulties. State won't try again for a year

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee officials on Thursday called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, after his executioners tried and failed for over an hour to establish an intravenous line. Gov. Bill Lee announced soon afterward that the state would not try again for at least a year. In a written statement, the Tennessee Department of Corrections said medical personnel had quickly established a primary IV line but were unable to find a suitable vein for a backup line as required by the state’s execution protocol. Efforts to insert a central line also failed, and officials called off the execution.

Arizona executes Leroy McGill

Arizona executes inmate who set couple on fire in 'horrific attack' Arizona has executed Leroy McGill for setting 21-year-old Charles Perez and his 24-year-old girlfriend on fire. Perez died the next day and Perez survived with severe burn injuries. Arizona has executed a death row inmate for setting 2 people on fire more than 20 years ago, killing 1 of them and changing the other's life forever. The state executed Leroy McGill, 63, by lethal injection on Wednesday, May 20, for the 2002 murder of 21-year-old Charles Perez. McGill set Perez and his girlfriend on fire after they accused him of theft, court records say. Perez died of his injuries the next day while his girlfriend survived with severe burns.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

Florida: The Daily Routine of Death Row Inmates

The breakfast carts rattle through the concrete prison at about 5:30 am and as they approach Death Row the first sounds of morning repeat the last sounds of night - remote controlled locks clanging open and clunking closed, electric gates whirring, heavy metal doors crashing shut, voices wailing, klaxons blaring. A maximum security prison has no soft or delicate sounds. At the end of each corridor of death row cells a guard opens a heavy door of steel bars and a prison trusty pushes a breakfast cart inside. The door closes behind him and when it locks a second door opens and admits the trusty to the wing. He steers his cart along the wing stopping at each cell to pass a tray of powdered eggs and lukewarm grits through a small slot on the bars. Food is prepared by prison staff and transported in insulated carts to the cells. The food carts are full of cockroaches, the food is often undercooked or just rotten and is served on Styrofoam plates with a plastic "spork" - fork/spoon...

Iraq: German schoolgirl, 17, turned jihadi bride escapes death penalty and is jailed for six years

GERMAN Jihadi bride Linda Wenzel has been jailed for six years in Baghdad for her role as an Islamic enforcer with terror group ISIS. Wenzel, 17, who last year sobbed on TV “I have ruined my life,” could have faced the death penalty. German media reported that a German embassy representative in Iraq was in court yesterday to witness her sentencing. She received five years for joining IS and one year for entering Iraq illegally. Wenzel was found in the rubble of IS stronghold Mosul back in the summer of 2017. Charges were laid against her and three other German women captured with her. Schoolgirl Wenzel fled to Turkey then into Syria last year from her hometown of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany after being groomed online by a Chechen IS fighter who she married. He was killed in the savage fighting for Mosul while she was employed by the terror group enforcing the strict Islamic dress code on women in the city. She burst into tears after her capture and said s...

Florida | Jury recommends death for Otto Lenke, judge to make final call

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A St. Lucie County jury recommended the death penalty for Otto Lenke on Thursday in the penalty phase of his first-degree murder trial, though the final decision rests with the judge. Lenke, 66, a former Melbourne police officer and Indian River County firefighter , was convicted earlier this month of first-degree murder and first-degree arson in the Feb. 17, 2021, killing of Richard Benson at Fast Frank’s Custom Cycle Components, Benson’s motorcycle repair shop in Fort Pierce . Prosecutors said Lenke shot Benson multiple times inside the shop, then poured a flammable liquid on him and set him on fire while he was still alive. Surveillance video from the shop captured the attack.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog