Houston (AFP) – A man convicted of killing a gas station clerk is to be put to death by nitrogen gas in Alabama, one of two executions scheduled in the United States on Thursday. Geoffrey West, 50, is to be executed at 6:00 pm US Central Time (2300 GMT) for the 1997 murder of Margaret Berry, a 33-year-old mother of two, during a robbery in the town of Attalla.
Blaine Milam, 35, is to be put to death by lethal injection at around the same time in Texas for the 2008 killing of Amora Carson, the 13-month-old daughter of his girlfriend, during an “exorcism.” According to court documents, the child was “beaten, strangled, sexually mutilated, and had twenty-four human bite marks covering her entire body in what the medical examiner called the worst case of brutality he had ever seen.” Milam’s lawyers have sought to halt his execution on the grounds he is intellectually disabled, but the appeals have been rejected by the courts. Milam’s case was among those featured in a 2013 Werner Herzog documentary called “On Death Row.”
There have been 31 executions in the United States this year, the most since 2014, when 35 inmates were put to death. Florida has carried out the most executions — 12 — followed by South Carolina and Texas with four each. Twenty-six of this year’s executions have been carried out by lethal injection, two by firing squad, and three by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate. The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place. President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.” Trump signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday directing federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in Washington, the nation’s capital, in appropriate cases.
© 2024 AFP
