A
Virginia woman who used sex and money to persuade two men to kill her
husband and her stepson to collect a $250,000 life insurance policy was
scheduled Thursday to be executed in two months, which would be the
first U.S. execution of a woman in five years.
(CNN) -- A Texas state board is set Friday to revisit
questions surrounding a controversial 2004 execution, with supporters of
the man's family warning the panel is trying to bury its own critical
review of the case.
Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004
for a fire that killed his three daughters. Prosecutors argued that
Willingham deliberately set the 1991 blaze -- but three reviews of the
evidence by outside experts have found the fire should not have been
ruled arson.
The death penalty: the punishment we reserve for the worst criminal
offenders. Last week, law enforcement officials said it was on the table
for four men charged in the shooting deaths of unarmed civilians in New
Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina. It's a signal that the
crimes were truly reprehensible. Much of what we think we know about
American capital punishment comes from the longstanding debate that
surrounds the institution. But in making their opposing claims,
death-penalty proponents and their abolitionist adversaries perpetrate
myths and half-truths that distort the facts. The United States' death
penalty is not what its supporters -- or its opponents -- would have us
believe.
