the absolute madness of the death penalty
AS HUMANS, PARENTS, SONS. DAUGHTERS, FRIENDS,LOVERS, THINKERS CAN WE NOT SEE THE MADNESS OF THE DEATH SENTENCE?
Clemency halts 1000th US execution
December 1, 2005 Robin Lovitt
Virginia Governor Mark Warner granted clemency today for a man who would have become the 1000th person executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
Warner commuted Robin Lovitt's sentence to life in prison, Warner's spokesman Kevin Hall said.
Lovitt was set to be executed by injection tomorrow night.
Lovitt, 42, was convicted in 1999 of murdering Clayton Dicks with a pair of scissors during a robbery at an Arlington pool hall.
Prosecutors said Dicks caught Lovitt prying open a cash register with the scissors. Police later found the scissors in the woods between the pool hall and the home of Lovitt's cousin.
Lovitt admitted grabbing the cash box, but insisted he saw someone else kill Dicks. Initial DNA tests on the scissors were inconclusive.
Lovitt's lawyers, who include former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who led the special investigation into President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, argued his life should be spared because a court clerk illegally destroyed the bloody scissors and other evidence, preventing post-conviction DNA testing that they claim could exonerate him.
