After three decades on death row, Texas inmate Bower executed

[Little Tich]

Source: YAhoo! News / Reuters

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas on Wednesday executed Lester Bower, one of the longest-serving inmates on the state's death row who had said he was wrongly convicted of killing four men in 1983 and had spent three decades trying to halt his capital punishment.

Bower was pronounced dead at 6:36 p.m. CDT after being given a lethal injection at the state's death chamber in Huntsville, a prisons official said.

A former chemical salesman with two children, Bower became the oldest death row inmate put to death in Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The state has executed 526 people in the period, the most of any state.

A few hours before the execution, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal filed by lawyers for Bower, who had already faced imminent execution six times, according to court papers.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/three-decades-death-row-texas-inmate-bower-executed-000306154.html

[byronius]

1. Good god, talking about racheting forward --

Primitive AND brutal.

[StevieM]

2. I've got a bad feeling that we may have just executed an innocent man. (eom)

[geomon666]

3. Wouldn't be the first time.

This barbaric, state sponsored revenge really needs to stop.