NEWS
By ELLEN GOODMAN | October 12, 2007
BOSTON -- So we have a national moratorium of sorts. An unofficial stay of execution. All quiet in the death chambers. In the days since the Supreme Court decided to take on another death penalty case, 11 states - including Texas, the capital of capital punishment - have suspended executions. In two more states, inmates slated for death next week may be granted a reprieve. Even the Europeans who led the World Day Against the Death Penalty on Wednesday must have missed having their favorite international target.
NEWS
By Jennifer Skalka | March 16, 2007
Efforts to repeal the death penalty in Maryland were dealt an apparently fatal blow yesterday when a key state Senate committee defeated the measure, leaving a court-ordered moratorium on state executions in place and some legislators weighing a study of the issue. Weeks of behind-the-scenes wrangling and lobbying by religious and law enforcement officials culminated yesterday with the bill's defeat in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee on a tie vote. Sen. Alex X. Mooney, the Frederick Republican and devout Catholic who was expected to swing the Senate vote, did not support the repeal after trying unsuccessfully to exempt prisoners who kill again while serving a jail term.
NEWS
By Kate Shatzkin | June 27, 1997
Flint Gregory Hunt, awaiting execution in the state's gas chamber next week, now says he wants to die by lethal injection -- but a city judge says it's too late to let the convicted killer change his mind.Baltimore Circuit Judge Richard T. Rombro, presiding over an emergency hearing on Hunt's request yesterday, said he feared that allowing an 11th-hour change would open up challenges to the method of death that could further delay Hunt's 12-year wait for execution.But delay may be inevitable.
NEWS
By Ivan Penn | June 28, 1997
Flint Gregory Hunt will not be executed in the state's gas chamber; instead he will die by lethal injection on a 300-pound steel table as he had requested in an 11th-hour petition to the state, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.The ruling fulfills what is perhaps one of the last wishes Hunt will have before his scheduled execution next week for the 1985 murder of Baltimore police Officer Vincent J. Adolfo.The court's unanimous, two-page decision included the condition that Hunt waive his right to challenge any further the method of his execution.
NEWS
By Kate Shatzkin | June 22, 1997
If Flint Gregory Hunt holds to his wish to be executed in the gas chamber next week, it will be one of the last uses in this country of what is seen as a dying method of capital punishment.It will be the final time in Maryland that a correctional officer pulls the lever that drops crystals of sodium cyanide into a bowl of sulfuric acid and water to create the deadly vapors -- an execution process that has taken place only four times before in the state's history."It's slowly going away," Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said of the gas chamber.
NEWS
By ROBERT A. ERLANDSON | June 29, 1997
AFTER SAYING he wanted to die in the gas chamber so his execution would look like "murder," Flint Gregory Hunt changed his mind last week and asked for lethal injection.Although a Circuit Court judge denied his request the Court of Appeals granted it, which will make Hunt the second person to die by injection in Maryland. The first was triple-murderer John F. Thanos in 1994 when injection became the official means of capital punishment.By choosing the gas chamber and then changing his mind at the last minute, Hunt may have been trying a ploy to gain a further delay.
NEWS
By Laura Demanski | August 10, 1997
"Prelude to a Scream," by Jim Nisbet. Carroll & Graf. 384 pages. $24. Jim Nisbet has taken an urban novel noir, folded in a grisly medical thriller, sprinkled on some literary pretensions for good measure, and come up with a impressively repulsive melange.Your own tastes should tell you whether to take this as a recommendation or a warning. The book's inventive spirit may please readers who can stomach aberrant behavior of the medical, sexual and ethical varieties. But even these hardy souls should immediately start practicing the fine art of suspending disbelief.
NEWS
By Kate Shatzkin | April 26, 1996
A Baltimore judge yesterday signed a death warrant for condemned killer Flint Gregory Hunt, setting his execution for the week of June 10.The warrant signed by Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan came two days after Hunt, who is sentenced to die for the Nov. 18, 1985 killing of Baltimore Police Officer Vincent J. Adolfo, lost one of his dwindling remaining appeals. Officer Adolfo, 25, was trying to handcuff Hunt in a dark East Baltimore alley when Hunt, who had a long criminal record, fired two deadly shots.
NEWS
By Dennis O'Brien | April 12, 1996
It is expensive, controversial and has been carried out only once in 35 years.And Maryland's death penalty will be debated again today when lawyers for Scotland Eugene Williams appear before the state's highest court to plead for his life.Williams, convicted in the 1994 shooting deaths of Washington lawyers Julie Gilbert and Jose Trias in their weekend home near Annapolis, is under two death sentences.His lawyers say the death penalty statue is unconstitutional because it allows a judge or jury to use a less-stringent standard to decide whether to impose the penalty than they would use to determine guilt.
NEWS
By Lyle Denniston | January 9, 1996
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court turned aside yesterday the third appeal in the past four years by Flint Gregory Hunt of Baltimore, the death row inmate who now appears to be the next in line for execution in Maryland.The justices made no comment as they refused to allow Hunt to reopen a constitutional challenge to his conviction for the murder of Baltimore police officer Vincent Adolfo in November 1985.The court's action clears the way for Maryland officials to schedule an execution date, although Hunt has another legal challenge pending before Baltimore Circuit Court.