Death Penalty News

Marion Wilson was declared dead at 9:52 p.m. after being put to death tonight by lethal injection for a murder committed more than 2 decades ago. The execution was carried out shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the 42-year-old's final appeals. Wilson’s lawyers had asked the high court to halt the execution, and the court waited about 2 hours after the scheduled 7 p.m. execution to issue its decision.  The nation’s highest court often waits until well after that hour before deciding whether to intervene. After hearing of the high court’s denial, Wilson’s 23-year-old daughter, Tykecia, screamed, “I want my daddy, I want my daddy back!” A man picked her up as she wailed, carried her to a car and drove away. The Georgia Supreme Court refused to issue a stay of execution this afternoon, and the state Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to grant clemency to Wilson this morning. Wilson was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Baldwi...

ON THE NIGHT of June 20, the United States will mark a grim milestone: the 1,500th execution since the return of the death penalty in 1976. Forty-two-year-old Marion Wilson Jr. is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. A clemency hearing will take place in Atlanta beforehand, but the execution will almost certainly proceed. The Georgia Department of Corrections announced Wilson’s last meal last week: thin-crust pizza, chicken wings, and ice cream. If there’s nothing inherently significant about the number 1,500, it is at least a moment for reflection. The 1,000th execution in the U.S. took place  amid candlelight vigils in North Carolina in 2005. Cameron Todd Willingham had been executed in Texas the previous year, for a crime many now recognize he did not commit. Then-President George W. Bush — who himself oversaw 152 executions in Texas — took the occasion to laud the death penalty, with no sense o...