http://www.newsmax.com/us/georgia_execution/2008/05/06/93956.html
Ga. Man Executed, Ending 7-Month Moratorium
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
JACKSON, Ga. -- A Georgia man who killed his live-in girlfriend was
executed Tuesday, the first inmate put to death since the U.S. Supreme
Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injections.
William Earl Lynd was pronounced dead at 7:51 p.m. EDT, Georgia
Department of Corrections spokeswoman Mallie McCord told The
Associated Press. It came less than an hour after the U.S. Supreme
Court rejected efforts to block it.
The roughly three dozen states around the country that use lethal
injection held off on carrying out any executions for more than seven
months while the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of
the three-drug cocktail that's used. It was the longest pause in U.S.
executions in a quarter century.
The Supreme Court last month upheld the legality of lethal injections,
and Georgia was the first state to carry one out.
Lynd, 53, was sentenced to die for kidnapping and shooting his live-in
girlfriend, Ginger Moore, three times in the face and head two decades
ago. After he buried Moore's body in a shallow grave near a south
Georgia farm, authorities said Lynd fled to Ohio, where he shot and
killed another woman who had stopped along the side of the road to
help him.
Lynd has never denied killing Moore, 26, two days before Christmas in
1988. But his lawyers had sought a last minute reprieve from the
courts, arguing that new forensic medical evidence showed he could not
have kidnapped her because she was already dead when he stuffed her in
the trunk of her car.
Prosecutors allege that Moore was still alive when Lynd placed her in
the trunk _ despite two gunshot wounds to the head. They say Lynd
confessed to authorities that he fired the final, lethal shot when he
heard her "thumping around" in the trunk.
The kidnapping had been an essential "aggravating" cir***stance that
made Lynd eligible for the death penalty.
Lawyers say Lynd and Moore had a volatile relation****p and were in a
heated argument over a trip to Florida when he shot her. His attorney,
Tom Dunn, argued that the shooting was not premeditated but, rather,
took place during an argument and after taking Valium, marijuana and
alcohol, and was not premeditated. In the days leading up to Lynd's
execution, Dunn asked several courts, including the U.S. Supreme
Court, to block it but was turned down each time.
Death penalty opponents staged vigils around the state Tuesday night
to protest the first of an expected wave of executions around the
country.
Texas conducted the nation's last execution, putting Michael Richard
to death on Sept. 25, 2007, the same day the Supreme Court agreed to
consider a Kentucky case brought by two prisoners who claimed the
lethal injection method violated the constitutional ban on cruel and
unusual punishment.
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