RICHMOND, Virginia -- Virginia's governor on Tuesday spared the life of a convicted killer who would have been the 1,000th person executed in the United States since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976.
Robin Lovitt's death sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole a little more than 24 hours before he was to be executed by injection Wednesday night for stabbing a man to death with a pair of scissors during a 1998 pool-hall robbery.
In granting clemency, Gov. Mark R. Warner noted that evidence had been improperly destroyed after Lovitt's trial.
"The commonwealth must ensure that every time this ultimate sanction is carried out, it is done fairly," Warner said in a statement.
Warner, a Democrat, had never before granted clemency to a death row inmate during his four years in office. During that time, 11 men have been executed.
The 1,000th execution is now scheduled for Friday in North Carolina, where Kenneth Lee Boyd is slated to die for killing his estranged wife and her father.
The nation's 999th execution since capital punishment resumed a generation ago took place Tuesday morning, when Ohio put to death John Hicks, who strangled his mother-in-law and suffocated his 5-year-old stepdaughter to cover up the crime.
Lovitt's lawyers, who include former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, and anti-death penalty advocates had argued that his life should be spared because a court clerk illegally destroyed the bloody scissors and other evidence, preventing DNA testing that they said could exonerate him.
Lovitt was convicted in 1999 of murdering Clayton Dicks at an Arlington pool hall. Prosecutors said Dicks caught Lovitt prying open a cash register with the scissors, which police found in the woods between the pool hall and the home of Lovitt's cousin.
Lovitt admitted grabbing the cash box but insisted someone else killed Dicks. Initial DNA tests on the scissors were inconclusive.
Warner said he was "acutely aware of the tragic loss experienced by the Dicks family."
"However, evidence in Mr. Lovitt's trial was destroyed by a court employee before that process could be completed," he said. "The actions of an agent of the commonwealth, in a manner contrary to the express direction of the law, comes at the expense of a defendant facing society's most severe and final sanction."
Governor spares convicted murderer
November 30, 2005, 9:35 am
by mobilycc
in World News
At least 60 die in Congo train accident
November 30, 2005, 9:32 am
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) -- At least 60 people were killed after being swept off the roof of a train as it passed through a bridge in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local officials said Tuesday.
"It seems there are over 60 dead in this accident," Koloso Sumaili, governor of Maniema province, told Reuters in Kinshasa after speaking with local officials in his region.
He said the accident happened Monday, about 124 miles (200 kilometers) south of the town of Kindu, as the train traveled toward the southern town of Lubumbashi.
"Trains that travel on that line have lots of people and goods on the roof. When the train was crossing over a bridge, the beams supporting the bridge swept people and goods off the train and into the river below," he said.
Congo's infrastructure is in tatters after years of decay followed by two wars over the last decade.
Most transport is now by air or river as roads and railways across Africa's third-largest country have crumbled or been swallowed up by the thick jungle.
"It seems there are over 60 dead in this accident," Koloso Sumaili, governor of Maniema province, told Reuters in Kinshasa after speaking with local officials in his region.
He said the accident happened Monday, about 124 miles (200 kilometers) south of the town of Kindu, as the train traveled toward the southern town of Lubumbashi.
"Trains that travel on that line have lots of people and goods on the roof. When the train was crossing over a bridge, the beams supporting the bridge swept people and goods off the train and into the river below," he said.
Congo's infrastructure is in tatters after years of decay followed by two wars over the last decade.
Most transport is now by air or river as roads and railways across Africa's third-largest country have crumbled or been swallowed up by the thick jungle.
by mobilycc
in World News
Video airs of purported hostages in Iraq
November 30, 2005, 9:29 am
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Arabic news service Al-Jazeera has aired video from a previously unknown group showing four kidnapped Western aid workers affiliated with a Christian organization in Iraq, along with a statement from the group calling them spies.
The Christian Peacemaker Teams has confirmed the men are affiliated with their group and disappeared on Saturday in Baghdad.
CNN cannot independently verify the video's authenticity.
CPT identified the men as Thomas W. Fox, 54, of Virginia; Dr. Norman Frank Kember, 74, of Britain; James Loney, 41, of Toronto; and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, a Canadian who has been studying in New Zealand.
Fox, from Clear Brook, Virginia, is a father of two children and has worked with CPT in Iraq for two years, the group said in a written statement.
Kember, a pacifist and peace activist from London, is married with two daughters and a 3-year-old grandson. He is a retired professor of medicine.
Loney, leader of the CPT delegation, is a community worker who has been a CPT member for more than five years. He has taken testimonies from families of detainees for CPT's report on detainee abuse.
Sooden is an electrical engineer studying for a master's degree in English literature at Auckland University.
In the four-minute, 40-second video, each man gives his name and age. The camera then pans across 14 identification cards -- including driver's licenses, credit cards and a passport -- from all of the men except Loney.
According to Al-Jazeera, the group, which calls itself "The Swords of Justice," said the four worked as spies under the cover of "the Christian Peace group."
A spokesman rejected the claim they are spies.
"They are not spies; they're committed peaceworkers," said William Payne, a staff member in the group's Chicago office.
In a written statement, the group, which also has an office in Toronto, said they were "very saddened to see the images of our loved ones" on Al-Jazeera and blamed the U.S. and British governments for the abductions.
"We were disturbed by seeing the video and believe that repeated showing of it will endanger the lives of our friends. We are deeply disturbed by their abduction," the statement said.
"We pray that those who hold them will be merciful and that they will be released soon. We want so much to see their faces in our home again, and we want them to know how much we love them, how much we miss them, and how anxious and concerned we are by what is happening to them."
The statement added, "We are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of the actions of the U.S. and UK government due to the illegal attack on Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people."
The organization's teams have "worked for the rights of Iraqi prisoners who have been illegally detained and abused by the U.S. government. We were the first people to publicly denounce the torture of Iraqi people at the hands of U.S. forces, long before the Western media admitted what was happening at Abu Ghraib."
The group had three other members in Baghdad, and there were no immediate plans to remove them, Payne said.
In a statement released shortly after the video was aired, the British Foreign Office said, "We utterly condemn the abduction of Norman Kember and his colleagues. The release of this video can only caused further distress to their families at this difficult time."
Tuesday's video came shortly after the German government concluded that Susanne Osthoff, 43, and her driver -- both missing in Iraq since Friday -- had been kidnapped.
German public television network ARD said it obtained video showing a kneeling, blindfolded woman and a man surrounded by three armed and masked gunmen.
Meanwhile, Iranian state television reported Tuesday that gunmen have released six Iranian pilgrims and an Iraqi woman seized Monday north of Baghdad, according to Reuters.
Christian party officials killed Gunmen ambushed members of a Christian political party, the Assyrian Democratic movement, in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, killing two of them and wounding two others, a hospital official said.
The attack happened in northeast Mosul as party officials were putting up posters for the December 15 parliamentary elections, said the official at Jamhouri hospital.
The killings come a day after gunmen killed a top Sunni Arab political activist, another sheik and their driver in Zaydun, west of Baghdad.
Sheikh Ayad al-Izzi, an Iraqi Islamic Party official, had been involved in the upcoming elections and the development of a new Iraqi constitution.
Other developments
Two Task Force Baghdad soldiers were killed Tuesday morning when their patrol struck a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. No further details were provided. The deaths bring the number of U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war to 2,110.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said he met with ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on Monday, describing him in "extremely good spirits," The Associated Press reported. Clark, who is serving as an adviser to the defense team, has questioned the adequacy of security measures in place for the trial. The trial has been adjourned until next Monday.
More than 370 members of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's clan disowned him Tuesday, the AP reported. In a full-page letter published in Jordanian newspapers, members of the Bani Hassan tribe renounced all ties to the militant, according to the AP. It was the family's second attempt to do so since the November 9 triple suicide blasts in Amman, Jordan, the AP said.
In an AP interview Monday, Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, said that President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of postwar planning in Iraq.
The Christian Peacemaker Teams has confirmed the men are affiliated with their group and disappeared on Saturday in Baghdad.
CNN cannot independently verify the video's authenticity.
CPT identified the men as Thomas W. Fox, 54, of Virginia; Dr. Norman Frank Kember, 74, of Britain; James Loney, 41, of Toronto; and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, a Canadian who has been studying in New Zealand.
Fox, from Clear Brook, Virginia, is a father of two children and has worked with CPT in Iraq for two years, the group said in a written statement.
Kember, a pacifist and peace activist from London, is married with two daughters and a 3-year-old grandson. He is a retired professor of medicine.
Loney, leader of the CPT delegation, is a community worker who has been a CPT member for more than five years. He has taken testimonies from families of detainees for CPT's report on detainee abuse.
Sooden is an electrical engineer studying for a master's degree in English literature at Auckland University.
In the four-minute, 40-second video, each man gives his name and age. The camera then pans across 14 identification cards -- including driver's licenses, credit cards and a passport -- from all of the men except Loney.
According to Al-Jazeera, the group, which calls itself "The Swords of Justice," said the four worked as spies under the cover of "the Christian Peace group."
A spokesman rejected the claim they are spies.
"They are not spies; they're committed peaceworkers," said William Payne, a staff member in the group's Chicago office.
In a written statement, the group, which also has an office in Toronto, said they were "very saddened to see the images of our loved ones" on Al-Jazeera and blamed the U.S. and British governments for the abductions.
"We were disturbed by seeing the video and believe that repeated showing of it will endanger the lives of our friends. We are deeply disturbed by their abduction," the statement said.
"We pray that those who hold them will be merciful and that they will be released soon. We want so much to see their faces in our home again, and we want them to know how much we love them, how much we miss them, and how anxious and concerned we are by what is happening to them."
The statement added, "We are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of the actions of the U.S. and UK government due to the illegal attack on Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people."
The organization's teams have "worked for the rights of Iraqi prisoners who have been illegally detained and abused by the U.S. government. We were the first people to publicly denounce the torture of Iraqi people at the hands of U.S. forces, long before the Western media admitted what was happening at Abu Ghraib."
The group had three other members in Baghdad, and there were no immediate plans to remove them, Payne said.
In a statement released shortly after the video was aired, the British Foreign Office said, "We utterly condemn the abduction of Norman Kember and his colleagues. The release of this video can only caused further distress to their families at this difficult time."
Tuesday's video came shortly after the German government concluded that Susanne Osthoff, 43, and her driver -- both missing in Iraq since Friday -- had been kidnapped.
German public television network ARD said it obtained video showing a kneeling, blindfolded woman and a man surrounded by three armed and masked gunmen.
Meanwhile, Iranian state television reported Tuesday that gunmen have released six Iranian pilgrims and an Iraqi woman seized Monday north of Baghdad, according to Reuters.
Christian party officials killed Gunmen ambushed members of a Christian political party, the Assyrian Democratic movement, in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, killing two of them and wounding two others, a hospital official said.
The attack happened in northeast Mosul as party officials were putting up posters for the December 15 parliamentary elections, said the official at Jamhouri hospital.
The killings come a day after gunmen killed a top Sunni Arab political activist, another sheik and their driver in Zaydun, west of Baghdad.
Sheikh Ayad al-Izzi, an Iraqi Islamic Party official, had been involved in the upcoming elections and the development of a new Iraqi constitution.
Other developments
Two Task Force Baghdad soldiers were killed Tuesday morning when their patrol struck a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. No further details were provided. The deaths bring the number of U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war to 2,110.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said he met with ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on Monday, describing him in "extremely good spirits," The Associated Press reported. Clark, who is serving as an adviser to the defense team, has questioned the adequacy of security measures in place for the trial. The trial has been adjourned until next Monday.
More than 370 members of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's clan disowned him Tuesday, the AP reported. In a full-page letter published in Jordanian newspapers, members of the Bani Hassan tribe renounced all ties to the militant, according to the AP. It was the family's second attempt to do so since the November 9 triple suicide blasts in Amman, Jordan, the AP said.
In an AP interview Monday, Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, said that President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of postwar planning in Iraq.
by mobilycc
in World News
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