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The Executioner's Hour

By standdown

"States shift away from holding midnight executions," is the AP report via Google News.Sleepy judges answering last-minute appeals by phone. Bleary-eyed family members shuffling into witness rooms. Protesters' faces illuminated by candles outside prison fences.These images of midnight executions, ingrained though they are by Hollywood and TV crime shows, have become outdated.Many states have adjusted their schedules in recent years, and the vast majority of U.S. executions now occur during daylight or early evening hours when courts are more accessible, according to an Associated Press review.Of the 34 states where the death penalty has been carried out since 1976, 15 states still execute inmates in the middle of the night.One of them is Tennessee, where double-murderer Steve Henley is to die by injection at 1 a...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on February 03, 2009 (boomark / email).