Word: stephenses
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One way or the other, it was bound to be Alpha Otis Stephens' last night. First he tried killing himself, during his last lonely hours in a cell, by slashing at one wrist with a safety razor. He bled only a little. Then, just after midnight, the state of...
But when the electricity was shut off, the prisoner twitched. Then he gasped, and began breathing steadily. Stephens, although apparently unconscious, was not dead. According to Georgia execution procedure, five more minutes had to pass before a pair of prison doctors could examine him and certify that he was alive...
These days it takes a botched or otherwise unusual execution to grab public attention. Executions have become so frequent they are usually relegated to a couple of column inches on the inside pages of morning newspapers. From the end of the de facto ten-year moratorium on capital punishment in...
Alpha Stephens was black, his victim white. Last year Stephens' lawyers filed a brief in the Supreme Court that cited the new study, arguing that Georgia's death penally law was discriminatory in practice. The same study is the basis of three appeals still pending before the federal...
The Supreme Court's vacillation can be seen in the various votes of Justice Harry Blackmun. In 1983 he cast the swing vote, agreeing with the majority to stay Stephens' execution. Then he reversed himself three weeks ago, voting with the new majority to lift the stay. Then...