RALEIGH, N.C. - A double murderer who said he didn't want to be known as a number became the 1,000th person executed in the United States since capital punishment resumed 28 years ago.
Kenneth Lee Boyd, who brazenly gunned down his estranged wife and father-in-law 17 years earlier, died at 2:15 a.m. Friday after receiving a lethal injection.
After watching Boyd die, Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page said the victims should be remembered. "Tonight, justice has been served for Mr. Kenneth Boyd," Page said.
Boyd's death rallied death penalty opponents, and about 150 protesters gathered outside the prison.
"Maybe Kenneth Boyd won't have died in vain, in a way, because I believe the more people think about the death penalty and are exposed to it, the more they don't like it," said Stephen Dear, executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty.
"Any attention to the death penalty is good because it's a filthy, rotten system," he said.
Boyd, 57, did not deny killing Julie Curry Boyd, 36, and her father, 57-year-old Thomas Dillard Curry. But he said he thought he should be sentenced to life in prison, and he didn't like the milestone his death would mark.
"I'd hate to be remembered as that," Boyd told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "I don't like the idea of being picked as a number."
The Supreme Court in 1976 ruled that capital punishment could resume after a 10-year moratorium. The first execution took place the following year, when Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in Utah.
In the execution chamber, Boyd smiled at daughter-in-law Kathy Smith — wife of a son from Boyd's first marriage — and a minister from his home county. He asked Smith to take care of his son and two grandchildren and she mouthed through the thick glass panes separating execution and witness rooms that her husband was waiting outside.In his final words, Boyd said: "God bless everybody in here."
In Boyd's pleas for clemency, his attorneys said he served in Vietnam where he operated a bulldozer and was shot at by snipers daily, which contributed to his crimes.
Execution No. 1,001 was scheduled for Friday night at 6 p.m., when South Carolina planned to put Shawn Humphries to death for the 1994 murder of a store clerk.
On the other side,
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore executed an Australian drug trafficker on Friday, despite repeated pleas from Australia's government for clemency and quiet protests by thousands opposed to the death penalty.
Nguyen Tuong Van was hanged at the city-state's Changi prison just before dawn. Within minutes, a large church bell in Nguyen's home city of Melbourne tolled 25 times -- once for every year of his life.
The hanging follows weeks of campaigning by his family and civil rights groups to stop the execution. Nguyen, who was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, was described by lawyers in his final hours as calm, resolute and ready to die.
Thousands of people gathered in Australia to pray for Nguyen while Singapore activists moved in pairs overnight to light candles at the prison. Public gatherings of more than four people require a police permit in the tightly controlled city-state.
"I hope the strongest message that comes out of this ... is to the young of Australia. Don't have anything to do with drugs, don't use them, don't touch them, don't carry them, don't traffic in them," Australian Prime Minister John Howard said.
Some 420 people have been hanged in Singapore since 1991, mostly for drug trafficking, an Amnesty International 2004 report said. That gives the country of 4.4 million people the highest execution rate in the world relative to population.
Opponents of the death penalty say support for capital punishment is weakening around the world. But at least 3,797 people were executed in 2004, according to Amnesty figures, which the group says is the second-highest number recorded since it started monitoring executions 25 years ago.
As Singapore and Australia absorbed news of the execution, the United States prepared to execute the 1000th prisoner since capital punishment was reinstated there nearly 30 years ago.
HELD HANDS
Diplomacy gave way to frustration this week in Australia, a staunch opponent of capital punishment, as its attorney-general branded Nguyen's impending execution a "barbaric" act.
About 70 people, including Australian politicians, gathered outside the Singapore High Commission in Canberra on Friday with a banner reading "Oh Singapore, how could you?" while protesters clutching flowers rallied in Sydney and Melbourne.
"The Singapore government had a very hard heart," said the Nguyen family's parish priest, Father Peter Norden, who led a service in Melbourne.
In a tiny concession to Australia, Singapore's prison authority allowed Nguyen to hold hands with his mother before his execution but rejected pleas to let them have a final hug.
Nguyen's twin brother Khoa and a lawyer arrived at the prison at dawn. They could not witness the execution but said they wanted to be as close as possible to him when he died. His mother Kim was in a Singapore chapel with friends, praying for her son.
"She said to me she was talking to him and able to touch his hair and face. It was a great comfort to her," Nguyen's lawyer Julian McMahon told reporters outside the prison.
Analysts said short-term relations between the countries would be strained because of the execution but said Singapore would not likely budge on its mandatory death sentence for crimes such as murder, firearms offences and drug trafficking.
"Singapore is a small, affluent society next door to one of the world's biggest suppliers of drugs -- the golden triangle. I think Singapore would have been a very different place if it was not tough on it," said political analyst Seah Chiang Nee.
Singapore is one of Australia's strongest allies in Asia and Howard has rejected calls for trade and military boycotts.
Sadly, the death penalty will continue to exist in the modern developed societies today. Why? Because it is a strong deterence, proponents said. However, we are taking a live here. Who are we to judge who live or die? Yes, the murderer killed someone and must be punished. However, must we stoop to his inhumane level and murder him just for retribution and revenge? Why is the death penalty truly there for? To act as a deterrene or act as a revenge for the victims and retribution for the culprit. Two wrongs do not make a right.
