JURIST - Paper Chase: US executes 1,000th person since death penalty reinstatement 28 years ago

[JURIST] Kenneth Lee Boyd became the 1,000th person executed Friday since the US Supreme Court [official website] reinstated [DPIC backgrounder] the country's capital punishment [Wikipedia backgrounder] program in 1977 after a 10-year moratorium. Boyd, who was convicted of fatally shooting his wife and father-in-law 17 years ago, did not deny the killings but said he thought he should receive a life jail sentence rather than death. Boyd said he would "hate to be remembered" as a number. Convicted killer Robin Lovitt would have been the 1,000th executed [JURIST report], but Virginia Governor Mark Warner [official website] commuted his death sentence [JURIST report] earlier this week. Both North Carolina Governor Mike Easley [official website] and the US Supreme Court refused to intervene and consider Boyd's clemency pleas. AP has more.

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