There were two planned executions in the US on Thursday – one was halted over questions of the suspect’s guilt and the other went ahead after the death row inmate asked to be killed.
The Texas Supreme Court stopped the scheduled execution of Robert Roberson, who was convicted of killing his two-year-old daughter in 2002.
He would have become the first person in the US to be put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.
Meanwhile, Derrick Dearman, 36, was pronounced dead at 6.14pm local time in Alabama after he dropped his appeal earlier this year and asked a judge to carry out his death sentence.
Dearman broke into a home where his estranged girlfriend had taken refuge, in a drug-fuelled rampage in 2016, and killed five people.
At least 20 people have been put to death in the US this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
But numbers have been trending down in recent decades.
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‘He was shocked, to say the least’
A flurry of last-ditch legal challenges and weeks of public pressure led to a late-night stay of execution for Roberson.
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His supporters claim he was sent to death row based on flawed science.
In the hours leading up to the ruling, Roberson sat in a prison cell just a few metres from his country’s busiest death chamber at the Walls Unit, in Huntsville, as he waited for certainty over his fate.
“He was shocked, to say the least,” said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson Amanda Hernandez, who spoke with Roberson after the court stayed his execution.
“He praised god and he thanked his supporters.”
The 57-year-old was convicted of killing his daughter Nikki Curtis but his lawyers and some medical experts have said she died from complications related to pneumonia.
A bipartisan coalition of state politicians employed unusual methods to save Roberson’s life, issuing a subpoena for him to testify before a committee next week – a plan, some conceded, which had never been tried before.
Less than two hours before Roberson’s execution, a judge sided with politicians before an appeals panel reversed the decision.
But then the all-Republican court ended a night of uncertainty with its ruling.
Meanwhile, while one man avoided the death penalty, another willingly underwent lethal injection.
Strapped to a gurney in the Alabama execution chamber, Dearman said to the families of his victims: “Forgive me. This is not for me. This is for you. I’ve taken so much.”
He also told his own family he loved them.
The lethal injection was carried out after Dearman dropped his appeals this year and asked the execution went ahead.
“I am guilty. It’s not fair to the victims or their families to keep prolonging the justice that they so rightly deserve,” he wrote in a letter to the judge in April.
On 20 August 2016, at a home near Citronelle, Alabama, Shannon Randall, 35, Joseph Turner, 26, Robert Lee Brown, 26, Justin Reed, 23, and Chelsea Reed, 22, were all killed.
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All of the victims were related or married and Chelsea Reed, who was married to Justin Reed, was pregnant.
In a statement, Bryant Randall, the father of Chelsea Reed said: “I so long for a final goodbye to my daughter and I would have loved to meet my grandchild.
“I was stripped in many ways of happiness and the bond of family by your [Dearman’s] senseless act.”
The father of Robert Lee Brown said his family will “suffer for the rest of their lives”.
“This don’t bring nothing back. I can’t get my son back or any of them back,” he added.
Bodycam footage showing prison officers fatally beating an inmate has been released by New York’s attorney general.
Prison officers at Marcy Correctional Facility in New York punched and kicked 43-year-old Robert Brooks repeatedly while he was handcuffed on an infirmary bed.
He died in hospital on 10 December, a day after the attack.
The incident has drawn outrage from political leaders and was condemned by the prison officers’ union as “incomprehensible”, according to Sky News’ partner newsroom NBC.
It is now being investigated by state attorney general Letitia James, who called the videos “shocking and disturbing” at a virtual news conference.
In the video, Mr Brooks is in handcuffs as he is carried into the infirmary by several prison guards.
They put him on the bed and begin repeatedly punching and kicking him.
He is pulled upright, where his bloodied face is visible on camera, and then yanked from the bed by his shirt collar and pushed up against a window.
One of the fourteen workers involved in the incident has resigned and the rest have been suspended without pay until the process to fire them is complete. The workers include correctional officers, sergeants and a prison nurse.
The officers had not activated their body cameras but they were still on and recorded in standby mode, without audio, during the attack.
As a result of the incident, all officers will now need to have their cameras activated any time they are engaging directly with prisoners.
Mr Brooks’ family thanked officials for taking action “to hold officers accountable” in a statement this week.
“We cannot understand how this could have happened in the first place,” the family said. “No one should have to lose a family member this way.”
The attack happened before 9.30pm on 9 December in a medical exam room after Mr Brooks had been transferred from the Mohawk Correctional Facility to Marcy Correctional Facility.
An autopsy found “preliminary findings show concern for asphyxia due to compression of the neck as the cause of death, as well as the death being due to actions of another,” according to a state corrections office investigative report obtained by an affiliate of Sky News’ partner newsroom WKTV in Utica.
Mr Brooks had been behind bars since 2017 on a 12-year sentence for first-degree assault involving a longtime girlfriend.
Officials declined to say why he had been transferred to the Marcy Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison.
Last year, an independent prison oversight group called The Correctional Association of New York released a report on the Marcy Correctional Facility.
It noted complaints of “rampant” physical abuse by staff members, with 80% of incarcerated people reporting having witnessed or experienced abuse and nearly 70% reporting racial discrimination or bias.
In response to the video, the union that represents workers at the prison said: “What we witnessed is incomprehensible to say the least and is certainly not reflective of the great work that the vast majority of our membership conducts every day.”
It adding what transpired is the “opposite of everything [the union] and its membership stand for.”
The world’s best golfer has suffered a freak injury while cooking Christmas dinner, forcing him to undergo surgery.
Scottie Scheffler sustained a puncture wound after cutting the palm of his right hand on broken glass.
The world number one required surgery as small glass fragments remained in the palm after the accident.
The injury has forced him out of the first tournament of the season, next week’s The Sentry in Hawaii.
But the 28-year-old has been told he will recover in three to four weeks, and he hopes to be back in action at The American Express tournament in California on 16 January.
Scheffler won an Olympic gold and seven PGA Tour titles in the last year and was recently named PGA Tour’s Player of the Year for a third season in a row.
In May, he was arrested by police during the US PGA Championship after he was accused of trying to drive around a traffic jam caused by a fatal accident.
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Just hours later, he was released and allowed to return to Valhalla Golf Club in Kentucky to play his second round of the tournament.
Criminal charges against Scheffler were later dismissed due to a lack of evidence and a police officer who arrested him was disciplined for not having his bodycam on at the time of the incident.
The man accused of burning a woman to death on a New York subway train has been indicted on murder and arson charges.
Sebastian Zapeta is accused of setting a sleeping woman on fire and then fanning the flames with a shirt, which caused her to be engulfed by the blaze.
He allegedly sat on a platform at Brooklyn’s Coney Island station, opposite the stopped train, and watched as she burned to death.
Authorities are still working to identify the victim.
Zapeta, 33, has been charged with one count of first degree murder, two counts of second degree murder and one count of arson in the first degree.
After a brief hearing in which the indictment was announced, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said: “This was a malicious deed. A sleeping, vulnerable woman on our subway system.”
Mr Gonzalez said police and medical examiners are using fingerprints and advanced DNA techniques to identify the victim, while also retracing her steps before the murder.
“Our hearts go out not only to this victim, but we know that there’s a family,” he said. “Just because someone appears to have been living in the situation of homelessness does not mean that there’s not going to be family devastated by the tragic way she lost her life.”
Such filings are often a first step in the criminal process because all felony cases in New York require a grand jury indictment to proceed to trial, unless a defendant waives that requirement.
Zapeta was not present at the hearing. The most serious charge he is facing carries a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole and the indictment will be unsealed on 7 January.
Zapeta is a Guatemalan who entered the US illegally having already been deported in 2018, officials say.
He was taken into custody last Sunday, after three children called 911 when they recognised him from an image shared by police.
During questioning, prosecutors say he claimed not to know what happened, and noted he consumes alcohol – but did identify himself in photos and videos showing the fire being lit.