A grim US milestone: 1,000th execution since 1976

The Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court had rejected last-minute appeals on Boyd’s behalf, and North Carolina Governor Mike Easley denied him clemency.

Boyd’s execution brings to 57 the number of people put to death in the US so far this year, surpassed only by China, Iran and Vietnam. His execution—and the grisly milestone it represents—evoked revulsion the world over. The vast majority of advanced industrialized countries have long since outlawed the practice.

Human rights advocates in the US and internationally condemned the execution. David Elliot of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty said the state killing marked “a time for somber and sober reflection.”

The 25-nation bloc of the European Union called for the end of the death penalty worldwide, commenting in a statement, “We consider this punishment cruel and inhuman.” Petra Herrmann, chairwoman of the German group Alive e.V., said, “It is a scandal that the death penalty still exists in a civilized country like the United States of America. How can a citizen realize that murder is wrong if the state is allowed to murder its own citizens?”

A group of about 150 people gathered early Friday morning outside Central Prison in Raleigh to protest Kenneth Lee Boyd’s execution. One of these protesters was Alan Gell, who was freed from North Carolina’s death row in 2004 when a second jury in his case found that prosecutors had withheld witness statements showing that he was in prison when the murder occurred.

“I think it’s bad that this state has to be the one to set the milestone when it’s a state that’s riddled with flaws in its justice system,” Gell said. The North Carolina state legislature nearly passed a moratorium on capital punishment this year in response to Gell’s case, but voted to let executions continue, opening the way for Friday’s execution.

Kenneth Boyd, 57, was convicted of the 1988 shootings of his estranged wife, Julie Curry Boyd, 36, and her father, Thomas Dillard Curry, 57, in the presence of his two young children. Boyd has not denied committing the murders. But as in so many death penalty cases, the brutal crime was preceded by a life beset by social problems.

Boyd was a Vietnam War veteran with a history of alcohol abuse. His lawyers argued that his experiences in the war, where as a bulldozer operator he was shot at by snipers on a daily basis, contributed to his violent outburst in 1988. He had no other history of violent crime.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/exec-d03.shtml