Christa Pike was sexually abused and raped from the time when she was a toddler until almost a year to the day before she was arrested in 1995 at age 18 for murdering fellow teenager Colleen Slemmer when the two attended a job training program for troubled youth in Knoxville. Tennessee officials do not dispute these facts. “I think everybody in this courtroom wishes that those things had…
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We speak with Keith LaMar, an artist, teacher and writer on death row in Ohio. LaMar, who has spent three decades in solitary confinement, was sentenced to death for the murder of five fellow prisoners during a 1993 prison uprising. He has always maintained his innocence. His trial was held in a remote Ohio community before an all-white jury. LaMar is one of three men on death row for whom Ohio…
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A federal appeals court has temporarily halted Thursday’s scheduled execution of Texas death row inmate Edward Busby, citing concerns over his eligibility for capital punishment because of intellectual disability. The 2-1 decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is in place “pending further order” of the court. Busby argued that a federal district court improperly denied the…
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