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Brian Dorsey, convicted of murdering his cousin and her husband, put to death amid efforts by many to have his sentence commutedBrian Dorsey, who was convicted of murdering his cousin and her husband in 2006, was executed in Missouri’s Bonne Terre state prison Tuesday despite an extraordinary effort by corrections officials and his appeals judge to have his capital sentence commuted.Prison officials confirmed that...

Prison guards, judges, jurors and prison workers have beseeched Mike Parson to commute capital punishment to life without paroleWith less than a week until Brian Dorsey is scheduled to be executed at Potosi correctional center in Missouri for the 2006 killings of his cousin and her husband, an extraordinary effort is underway to have the 52-year-old’s capital sentence commuted to life without parole.More than...

Lawyers failed to persuade courts to stay the execution, arguing procedure amounted to cruel and unusual punishmentAlabama has carried out the first execution of a death row inmate in the US using nitrogen gas, an untested procedure which the prisoner’s lawyers had argued amounted to a form of cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution.Kenneth Smith, 58, was pronounced dead at 8.25pm...

Private equity firm Onex Corp partly owns company that makes mask for use in untested nitrogen hypoxia execution methodA Canadian company is facing criticism for allegedly supplying the equipment for a state execution in the United States, in a case that has drawn outrage for the reliance on a seemingly untested method of execution.On Thursday, Alabama plans to kill inmate Kenneth Smith by suffocating...

Kenneth Smith, to be executed in Alabama by untested gas method, tells Guardian of nightmares from failed lethal injectionOn Tuesday morning, Kenneth Smith will be moved within the Holman correctional facility in Alabama to the “death cell”, the bluntly named holding unit where condemned prisoners are placed two days before their appointed execution.Smith knows the cell well. He knows its dimensions and the feel...