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US executes 1,000th criminal since 1976

The US yesterday executed the 1,000th person since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1976, when Kenneth Boyd was given a lethal injection at a North Carolina jail, authorities said.

"Warden Marvin Polk pronounced Boyd dead at 2:15am," the North Carolina Department of Corrections said in a statement.

"I was just going to ask Kathy, my daughter-in-law, to look after my son and grandchildren. God bless everybody in here," were the last words uttered by Boyd, 57.

Boyd was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1994 for the murders six years earlier of his estranged wife and father-in-law.

Reporters who witnessed his execution said one minute after the lethal injection was administered, Boyd's breathing became labored. At 2:05am, color drained from his face.

"Tonight justice has been served," Sheriff Sam Page told reporters outside the prison.

Last-minute appeals for clemency were rejected by US courts and North Carolina's governor.

Some 200 protesters against capital punishment, including a group from Amnesty International, gathered outside the Raleigh prison ahead of Boyd's execution. Around 16 were arrested for attempting to enter the facility.

Boyd's execution suddenly became the focus of national attention after Virginia's governor on Tuesday commuted at the 11th hour the sentence of another death row inmate who would have been number 1,000.

The US Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that executions were allowable under the Constitution, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment.

"The 1,000th execution is a significant event in the nation's 30-year experiment with capital punishment," said Richard Dieter, director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center.

While over 3,000 people are currently on death row in US prisons, statistics show a 50 percent decline in the number of death sentences since the late 1990s, and a 40 percent drop in executions since they peaked at 98 in 1999. There were 59 executions last year.

The death penalty has come under fire after an increase in cases of inmates facing execution being found innocent after their convictions. In the last 32 years, 122 death row inmates have been exonerated and released.

Last month, a Gallup poll showed that 64 percent of Americans remain in favor of capital punishment, down from 80 percent in the 1990s.

The death penalty is legal in 38 US states, but many seldom or never use it.

More than half of all executions take place in three states: Texas has executed 355 people, Virginia has put to death 94 and Oklahoma another 79, since 1976.

The US government also has the death penalty on its books for federal cases.

The most prominent federal execution in recent years was that of Timothy McVeigh, who was executed in 2001 for the 1995 bombing of an Oklahoma City US government building in which 168 died.

The first person executed after the Supreme Court's 1976 ruling was Gary Gilmore, who was killed by firing squad in Utah in 1977.

He was immortalized in US author Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song.

Since then, 832 death row inmates have been killed by lethal injection, 152 through electrocution, 11 in a gas chamber, three by hanging and two were shot by firing squad, including Gilmore.

North Carolina has conducted its executions at 2am since the penalty was reinstated, said Keith Acree, spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Corrections.

"It's a time when the prison is pretty much locked down for the night. In the day, it's a very busy place, with inmates going to doctor's appointments, to meals, etc," he said.
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