US executions milestone spurs fresh debate

RALEIGH, North Carolina - Double murderer Kenneth Lee Boyd became the 1000th prisoner executed in the United States since the reinstatement of capital punishment when he was put to death by lethal injection yesterday.

The execution drew global attention because of its symbolism since the US Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to be brought back in 1976 after a nine-year unofficial moratorium.

It helped spur renewed debate over US capital punishment, and came on a day that executions in Singapore and Saudi Arabia also sparked international concerns.

"God bless everybody in here," Boyd said in his last words to witnesses from the death chamber at Central Prison in North Carolina's state capital, Raleigh.

Boyd, who was 57, was a Vietnam War veteran with a history of alcohol abuse. He was executed for killing his wife and father-in-law in 1988, in front of two of his children.

"This 1000th execution is a milestone, a milestone we should all be ashamed of," his lawyer Thomas Maher said.

With polls showing that a declining majority of the American public backs the death penalty, the White House reiterated US President George W. Bush's support.

"The president strongly supports the death penalty because he believes ultimately it helps save innocent lives," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

Bush is a former governor of Texas, which has accounted for 355 of the 1000 executions -- more than three times as many as any other state.

Boyd was wheeled into the death chamber, strapped to a gurney and injected with a fatal mix of three drugs.

He seemed "sort of resigned," said witness Elyse Ashburn.

Sheriff Sam Page of Rockingham County, which prosecuted Boyd, defended the execution. "Tonight justice has been served," he said, and he urged people to pray for the murder victims. Two of the victims' relatives witnessed the execution but did not speak after.

About 100 death-penalty opponents gathered on a sidewalk outside the prison. They held candles and read the names of the other 999 convicts who have been put to death.

About 17 protesters were detained and charged with trespassing after stepping onto prison property, police said. Witnesses said many had been on their knees in prayer.

World reaction to Boyd's death was swift.

"It is a scandal that the death penalty still exists in a civilized country like the United States of America," said Petra Herrmann, chairwoman of the German group Alive e.V.

"How can a citizen realize that murder is wrong if the state is allowed to murder its own citizens?" she said.

Akiko Takada, of Japan's anti-capital punishment group Forum 90, said that despite frequent US use of the death penalty "crime there shows no signs of diminishing, so ultimately the death of these people has no effect."

"This is one small step for humankind -- backwards," American campaigner Clive Stafford Smith said. "The death penalty makes us all far more barbaric." Bush believed it was important that the death penalty be administered "fairly and swiftly and surely" with expanded DNA testing to make sure convictions were secure, McClellan said.

Thirty-eight of the 50 US states and the federal government permit capital punishment, and only China, Iran and Vietnam held more executions in 2004 than the United States, according to rights group Amnesty International.

A Gallup Poll in October showed 64 per cent of Americans favored the death penalty -- the lowest level in 27 years and down from a high of 80 per cent in 1994. Improved DNA testing that has led to several criminal convictions being overturned has fueled doubts about the fairness of capital punishment.

Singapore, with the world's highest execution rate relative to population, also carried out a death penalty yesterday, with the hanging of Australian drugs trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van despite Australian government pleas for clemency.

In Saudi Arabia, murderer Ahmad al-Shaater became at least the 78th person put to death this year in the conservative kingdom.

South Carolina was scheduled to execute another American, Shawn Paul Humphries, by lethal injection at 6pm (12.00pm NZDT) today for the killing of a convenience store owner.

- REUTERS