Miami (AFP) – A Florida man convicted of murdering a woman during a robbery was put to death by lethal injection on Tuesday, one of two executions scheduled in the United States this week. Mark Geralds, 58, was executed at 6:15 pm (2315 GMT) at the Florida state prison in Raiford after abandoning legal appeals against his death sentence. Geralds was convicted of the 1989 murder of Tressa Pettibone, 33, who was beaten and stabbed to death in her home. Pettibone’s eight-year-old son found her body when he returned home from school.
Florida has carried out 18 executions this year, more than any other US state. There have been five each in Alabama and Texas. Tennessee is scheduled to carry out its third execution of the year on Thursday. Harold Nichols, 64, is to be executed by lethal injection at a state prison in Nashville for the rape and murder of Karen Pulley, 20.
There have been 45 executions in the United States this year, the most since 2010, when 46 inmates were put to death. Thirty-seven of this year’s executions have been carried out by lethal injection. Three have been by firing squad and five 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.”
© 2024 AFP
