South Carolina killer eats fried fish, fried shrimp, crab cakes, a baked potato, carrots, fried okra, cherry pie, banana pudding and sweet tea before execution

 The 23rd Execution of 2025

Stephen Stanko, a South Carolina man sent to death row twice for separate murders was put to death June 13, 2025 by lethal injection in the state’s sixth execution in nine months, reported The Associated Press.

Stanko, 57, was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m.

He was executed for shooting a friend and then cleaning out his bank account in Horry County in 2005.

Stanko also was serving a death sentence for killing his live-in girlfriend in her Georgetown County home hours earlier, strangling her as he raped her teenage daughter. Stanko slit the teen’s throat, but she survived.

The execution began after a 3 1/2 minute final statement where Stanko apologized to his victims and asked not to be judged by the worst day of his life. Witnesses could hear prison officials asking for the first dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital which was different from previous executions.

Stanko appeared to be saying words, turned toward the families of the victims and then let out several quick breaths as his lips quivered.

Stanko appeared to stop breathing after a minute. His ruddy complexion quickly disappeared and the color drained from his face and hands. A prison employee asked for a second dose of pentobarbital about 13 minutes later. He was announced dead about 28 minutes after the execution started.

Three family members of his victims stared at Stanko and didn’t look away until well after he stopped breathing. Stanko’s brother and his lawyer also watched. Attorney Lindsey Vann, who watched her second inmate client die in seven months rubbed rosary beads in her hands.

Stanko was leaning toward dying by South Carolina’s new firing squad, like the past two inmates before him. But after autopsy results from the last inmate killed by that method showed the bullets from the three volunteers nearly missed his heart, Stanko went with lethal injection.

Stanko was the last of four executions scheduled around the country this week. Florida and Alabama each put an inmate to death on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Oklahoma executed a man transferred from federal to state custody to allow his death

The federal courts rejected Stanko’s last-ditch effort to spare his life as his lawyers argued the state isn’t carrying out lethal injection properly after autopsy results found fluid in the lungs of other inmates killed that way.

Also South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster refused clemency in a phone call to prison officials minutes before the execution began.

A governor has not spared a death row inmate’s life in the previous 48 executions since South Carolina reinstated the death penalty about 50 years ago.

Stanko is the sixth inmate executed in South Carolina in nine months after the state went 13 years without putting an inmate to death because it could not obtain lethal injection drugs. The South Carolina General Assembly approved a firing squad and passed a shield law bill which allowed the suppliers of the drugs to stay secret.

In his final statement, Stanko talked about how he was an honor student and athlete and a volunteers and asked several times not to be judged by the night he killed two people.

“I have live for approximately 20,973 days, but I am judged solely for one,” Stanko said in his final statement read by his lawyer.

Stanko apologized several times to his victims and their families.

“Once I am gone, I hope that Christina, Laura’s family and Henry’s family can all forgive me. The execution may help them. Forgiveness will heal them.”

Stanko ate his last meal on Wednesday as prison officials give inmates a chance to enjoy their special food before their execution day. He ate fried fish, fried shrimp, crab cakes, a baked potato, carrots, fried okra, cherry pie, banana pudding and sweet tea.

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Bunch: 'Trump has chosen radicalization and polarization'

 Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: 

One can’t help but wonder if Braxton Bragg — the infamous and incompetent Confederate general who owned 105 enslaved African Americans, waged war on Mexicans, and was so awful his own troops tried to assassinate him ... twice — was looking up from his fiery eternity and smiling.

Nearly 149 years after Bragg’s death — and four months after a U-turn that involved a juvenile ploy to reattach this traitor’s name to the sprawling U.S. Army base in his native North Carolina — here came the 47th president of the nation that trounced Bragg up and down the Civil War battlefield. Yet, on Tuesday, Donald Trump all but promised a sea of beret-wearing soldiers a return to Confederate values, under a large banner that read, “THIS WE’LL DEFEND.”

The insurrectionist Bragg surely would have been heartened when Trump used his powerful platform to rally an entire army against democratically elected public officials like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — and when the uniformed troops of a once proudly apolitical U.S. Army answered with thunderous applause.

Like everything else about Trump’s strongman regime, the cheers had been manufactured. Military.com later reported that the chiseled forces of the storied 82nd Airborne Division behind Trump’s podium had been picked, in part, for their right-wing political views and also — according to one email obtained by the news site — to satisfy our allegedly 224-pound (lol) president with “no fat soldiers.” (Yes, Trump’s Tinder ad for his dream-date U.S. soldier essentially read, “No fatties.”)

“If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don’t want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out,” read another email. No wonder Trump’s audience not only laughed and cheered at ugly diatribes against their prior commander in chief, Joe Biden, and a free press, but also lined up for a vendor who was somehow allowed into Fort Bragg to sell items such as “Make America Great Again” chain necklaces and phony credit cards labeled “White Privilege Card: Trumps Everything.”

This we’ll defend?

It’s not an exaggeration to say that June 10, 2025, will go down in American history as a day of infamy, when an authoritarian president made clear that the world’s largest and most lethal fighting force now exists to enforce his personalist political agenda, and not to defend the nation’s people.

And it’s no surprise that Trump’s harshest critics came from the outraged ranks of patriotic veterans like Hurricane Katrina relief hero and retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who called the “damn” speech “inappropriate” in a tweet, adding that “I never witnessed that S..t [sic] like this in 37 years in Uniform.”

But while Trump’s blatant politicizing of the U.S. military was a horrific crime against democracy in its own right, this fateful moment did not occur in a vacuum.

Although the ostensible purpose of the Fort Bragg speech was to kick off the 250th birthday party for a U.S. Army launched in 1775 to oppose (irony alert) a cruel and arbitrary monarch, the real mission seemed to celebrate the two-day anniversary of Trump’s crossing-the-Rubicon decision to federalize the National Guard and call out Marines on the American soil of Los Angeles.

Under legal justifications that seemed invented from whole cloth, the California National Guard operation that Trump now commands against the will of Newsom — whose state is suing the regime — to quell protests against federal immigration raids that the White House falsely calls “an insurrection” is already seeing heavily armed troops detaining LA residents.

The added call-up of 700 Marines — troops trained not to enforce public safety but to kill people — is making clear that an increasingly botched American Experiment is entering a terrifying new phase in which the might of our grossly oversized military is deployed to silence domestic dissent.

The shocking video this week of a train carrying scores of Army M1-A1 Abrams tanks past the Washington Monument and into the center of Washington, D.C., where a 250th Army anniversary parade on Saturday night coincidentally falls on Trump’s 79th birthday, makes clear the real point: Trump has been planning a military junta style of undemocratic government from Day One.

This week, Rolling Stone reported that the military is likely to remain on the streets of LA for weeks, accompanying agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as they increase raids on Home Depots, car washes, and farms to meet the regime’s arbitrary mass deportation goal of one million migrant arrests this year. A source told the magazine that “it is hard to imagine that protesters would stay home for this, and that escalation in such a scenario is all but inevitable.”

And yet, it’s disturbing the extent to which even smart and good pro-democracy politicians and pundits still aren’t seeing this. Wednesday night, I heard Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin — fresh off a well-deserved grilling of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Capitol Hill — go on MSNBC and still insist that Trump sending in the Marines in Southern California is “a distraction” from his failed economic policies.

No.

This is not a distraction from the essence of the 47th presidency. This is rather what Trump’s MAGA movement was always all about, imposing his will on the divided nation that just barely elected him in November as the kind of “red Caesar” dictator that extreme-right “thought leaders” have been pleading for, and using brute force to get there.

A president whose disastrous first term ended with a violent attempted coup to block the peaceful transfer of power is now moving quickly in his second term to consolidate power, to accomplish the form of autocracy he sought on Jan. 6, 2021.

What we are watching this week, from the chaos in downtown LA to the Mussolini-like strutting at Fort Bragg to the soon-to-be-pothole-ravaged streets of D.C., is nothing less than Trump’s second attempted self-coup against the United States. And this one offers a much greater chance of success, unless the resistance mobilizes quickly.

It’s true that — as the brilliant New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and others have noted — Trump and his henchmen, like anti-immigrant guru Stephen Miller, are making their move now less because he is a strongman, and more because his nearly five months in office have revealed him as a weak man.

His “Big Beautiful Bill” that would devastate U.S. healthcare and other public goods is not surprisingly foundering in Congress. Scores of judges — some appointed by Trump in his first term — are striking down his worst dictatorial moves. Most importantly, the president’s public support is plunging rapidly toward Nixonian levels, with a new Quinnipiac Poll showing 56% of Americans oppose his mass deportation, while his overall approval has sunk to 38%.

What would Chairman Mao or Comrade Lenin do? The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum, an expert on authoritarianism, nailed it in her latest essay: “Now Trump faces the same choice as his revolutionary predecessors. Give up — or radicalize. Find compromise — or polarize society further. Slow down — or use violence. Like his revolutionary predecessors, Trump has chosen radicalization and polarization, and he is openly seeking to promote violence.”

What’s happening in Los Angeles is bad, but it’s only the beginning. It was reported this week that ICE is planning to send militarized “tactical units” into Democratic-run cities, including Philadelphia — as well as Chicago, New York, Seattle, and northern Virginia. It’s noteworthy that the Trump regime’s open-ended orders federalizing National Guard members in California weren’t limited to the Golden State, suggesting that we could see armed troops patrolling past Independence Hall sooner rather than later.

With all the scary stuff that’s happening right now, arguably the most alarming is the Trump regime’s efforts — amplified by the predictable Fox News tape reels of the few cars that burned last weekend in LA — to claim that any form of dissent is now a terrorist threat against “the homeland.” From the Oval Office, the president said of the D.C. tank parade: “If there’s any protester that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force.”

Not rioters. Not looters. Protesters. American citizens exercising their First Amendment right to air their grievances with the government and voice dissent would be greeted in the nation’s capital with tanks, just as happened in Tiananmen Square 36 years ago this month.

This is a 10-alarm fire for American democracy that screams out for action.

As it happens, there is a protest slated for Saturday — a huge one. It’s called, beyond fittingly, No Kings, and marches and rallies are now planned for more than 1,800 cities, state capitals, and small towns in all 50 states. Everywhere except Trump’s childish D.C. birthday party in Washington. If you are able to attend No Kings and rekindle the spirit that threw off one monarchy here in Philly in 1776, I’d urge you to do so.

A general who once fought to defend a tyrannical regime of slavery predicted in 1861, “We shall show you that we are stronger than you, and that we will beat you in the long run.” That was, of course, Braxton Bragg, on his buffoonish journey toward the dustbin of history. The most important thing about reactionary movements and the dictators who lead them is that they fail.

Donald Trump’s second coup will fail, too — but only after we the people make clear that this will not stand.

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LAW & CRIME: Trump’s deployment of military to the streets of Los Angeles exceeds his presidential authority

Matthew T. Mangino
LAW & CRIME
June 14, 2025

President Donald Trump’s deployment of nearly 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles has exceeded the legal limits of how the military can be used to enforce domestic laws in American cities.

The Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, intends to prove that in a court of law. The state has filed a lawsuit alleging, “President Trump has repeatedly invoked emergency powers to exceed the bounds of lawful executive authority.”

“On Saturday, June 7, he used a protest that local authorities had under control to make another unprecedented power grab, this time at the cost of the sovereignty of the state of California and in disregard of the authority and role of the Governor as commander-in-chief of the state’s National Guard,” says the complaint, which was filed in federal court.

U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer agreed. Breyer, a Bill Clinton appointee who also happens to be the brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, declared that Trump’s “actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” and ordered control of the National Guard returned to Newsom. The order was supposed to take effect Friday at noon, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court granted an administrative stay late Thursday night, pausing — at least temporarily — Breyer’s order.

What this lawsuit comes down to is the Insurrection Act versus the Posse Comitatus Act. One act is more than 200 years old and the other, nearly a century and a half.

The Insurrection Act, passed in 1807, authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion, invasion or to enforce federal law in certain situations. The Posse Comitatus Act, passed in 1878, was put in place to ensure that the federal military would not be used to intervene in the establishment of Jim Crow laws in the former Confederacy after Reconstruction. The overarching principle of the Act is to prevent the military from interfering in the affairs of civilian government.

When it comes to the Insurrection Act, troops can be deployed under several sections of the law. The statute’s requirements are not clearly defined, leaving some aspects of the law to the discretion of the president. One provision provides that the president can send in troops at a governor’s request. A second provision provides the president with the authority to deploy troops to “enforce the laws” of the United States or to “suppress rebellion” whenever unlawful obstructions make it difficult to enforce federal law — even against the state’s wishes.

A third provision provides if anyone in a state is being deprived of a constitutional right and state authorities are unable or unwilling to protect that right — think Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy following Brown v. Board of Education — the president can deploy troops.

“He [Trump] is declaring utterly bogus emergencies for the sake of trying to expand his power, undermine the Constitution and destroy civil liberties,” Ilya Somin, a libertarian professor at Antonin Scalia Law School, told the New York Times.

Now let’s juxtapose the Insurrection Act with the Posse Comitatus Act. The Posse Comitatus Act consists of just one sentence: “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

In practice, this means that members of the military who are subject to the law may not participate in civilian law enforcement unless doing so is expressly authorized by a statute or the Constitution. Supposedly that statute would be the Insurrection Act — but clearly there is no insurrection or rebellion, and Trump has said as much.

Here is Trump’s rationale, straight from a June 7 White House memo:

In light of these incidents and credible threats of continued violence, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard under 10 U.S.C. 12406 to temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions, including the enforcement of Federal law, and to protect Federal property.

Section 12406 provides that the President may active the National Guard if the country” is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign country”; there is a “rebellion or danger of rebellion”; or the president is unable with regular forces “to execute the laws of the United States.” None of those circumstances exist, and even if one did, Section 12046 concludes with, “Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States …

The White House is violating, in the most blatant way, the United State Constitution. But why? The New York Times suggests, after talking with various experts that the “real purpose, they worry, may be to amass more power over blue states that have resisted Trump’s deportation agenda. And the effect, whether intentional or not, may be to inflame the tensions in L.A., potentially leading to a vicious cycle in which Trump calls up even more troops or broadens their mission.”

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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Man executed in Oklahoma for murder of 77-year-old woman

 The 22nd Execution of 2025

John Fitzgerald Hanson, 61, was executed for the 1999 murder of a 77-year-old woman. He pronounced dead at 10:11 a.m. Thursday, June 12, 2025 at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. "Peace to everyone," he said at the end of his last words while strapped to the execution gurney, reported The Oklahoman.

He had been scheduled for execution on Dec. 15, 2022, but the Biden administration refused to return him to Oklahoma from a federal prison in Louisiana. The transfer went through on March 1, weeks after Trump began his second term.

He was executed for the fatal shooting of Mary Agnes Bowles, who was kidnapped from the parking lot of a Tulsa mall on Aug. 31, 1999. The victim was 77.

Hanson and an accomplice, Victor Miller, wanted the retired banker's car for a robbery spree. Hanson has always denied being the shooter, his attorneys said.

Hanson had been serving a life sentence, plus 82 years, at the U.S. Penitentiary in Pollock, Louisiana, for federal crimes involving the robbery spree. Oklahoma's attorney general, Gentner Drummond, sought Hanson's transfer after Trump issued a sweeping executive order on his first day back in office "restoring" the death penalty.

Hanson was executed in Oklahoma as a direct result of President Donald Trump's return to office, reported The Oklahoman.

"It is the policy of the United States to ensure that the laws that authorize capital punishment are respected and faithfully implemented, and to counteract the politicians and judges who subvert the law by obstructing and preventing the execution of capital sentences," Trump stated in his order.

President Joe Biden opposed the death penalty. In December, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row.

“This case demonstrates that no matter how long it takes, Oklahoma will hold murderers accountable for their crimes," Drummond said in a news release after witnessing the execution. 

One of the inmate's attorneys said after the execution that Oklahoma had carried out an act of pointless cruelty.

"There was no need for Oklahoma to execute John Hanson," attorney Callie Heller said in a news release. "He would have lived the rest of his life in federal prison, costing the state nothing and posing no danger to anyone."

The execution took only 10 minutes to complete after Hanson made his brief final statement. It was the 17th in Oklahoma since lethal injections resumed in October 2021 after a long hiatus and one of the fastest.

It also was the third in the United States this week. A fourth execution is scheduled for Friday, June 13, in South Carolina.

Hanson blinked rapidly as the curtain to the execution chamber was raised at 10 a.m. He then said either "just forgive me" or "just forgiveness" when asked if he had any last words. Media witnesses differed on what he said at first because he spoke in a low voice.

A spiritual adviser, pastor Michael Scott, stood by the inmate's feet and read from a Bible as the execution drugs began to flow into his arms. Hanson could be heard snoring when the Oklahoma Department of Corrections operations chief announced he was unconscious.

Who was Mary Bowles?

The retired banker was from Tulsa. She was kidnapped after walking at the Promenade Mall for exercise. She had done volunteer work earlier that day at a Tulsa hospital in the intensive care unit for babies.

The two men took her in her car to a dirt pit near Owasso.

There, the accomplice shot Jerald Thurman, the owner of the dirt pit, after he spotted them on his property, according to trial testimony. Thurman died about two weeks later.

Hanson shot Bowles four to six times in a ditch near the dirt pit. Her body wasn't found for days.

The stolen Buick broke down after the two men went to a motel in Tulsa. They abandoned the car there.

Hanson also was convicted of the dirt pit owner's murder and sentenced for that crime to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The accomplice, Miller, was given life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murders after death sentences were thrown out on appeal. He is now 62.

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 on May 7 to deny Hanson clemency. The vote meant Gov. Kevin Stitt could not consider commuting his sentence.

At his clemency hearing, he told the board members he was not an evil person.

"I haven't lived my life inclined to do wrong," he said. "I was caught in a situation I couldn't control. Things were happening so fast, and at the spur of the moment, due to my lack of decisiveness and fear, I responded incorrectly, and two people lost their lives.

"I can't change the past, and I would if I could."

His attorneys and death penalty opponents said he was autistic and easily manipulated. His attorneys also contended there was overwhelming evidence that the accomplice was the one who actually shot Bowles.

Hanson did not testify at his 2001 trial in Tulsa County District Court. He also did not testify at a 2006 resentencing trial.

More: 'A remarkable development': States expanding their execution methods to firing squad, more

His attorneys tried to stop his execution, complaining in lawsuits about his transfer to Oklahoma and his clemency hearing. They also made a last-minute claim of newly discovered evidence about a key prosecution witness.

An Oklahoma County judge granted Hanson a temporary stay on Monday, June 9, so his lawsuit over his clemency hearing could be considered. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Wednesday, June 11, the judge did not have that authority.

The execution went forward after the Oklahoma Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Hanson's last requests for emergency stays.

"I feel like now we can finally be at peace with this," said Jacob Thurman, the dirt pit owner's son, after witnessing the execution. "I feel like we have some closure and our families can pick up the pieces now and move forward."

The son, who lives in Tulsa, said it took an army of people to make the execution happen. He specifically thanked U.S Attorney General Pam Bondi, who ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer Hanson "so that Oklahoma can carry out this just sentence."

Bowles' niece, Sara Parker Mooney, called for reforms after witnessing the execution.

"Capital punishment is not an effective form of justice when it takes 26 years," said Mooney, who lives in Texas. "Respectfully, if the state is going to continue to execute individuals a better process is needed. This existing process is broken.

"There must be limitations on taxpayer-funded frivolous litigation as exemplified in the past two weeks. It's ridiculous, it's expensive and it only revictimizes the survivors."

She said she is relieved that the execution is over with. "But nobody wins," she said.

Hanson did not request anything specific for his last meal, said Steven Harpe, the executive director of the Corrections Department.

Hanson did eat the regular meal of a chicken pot pie, two fruit cups, two rolls and some carrots, the official said. Hanson declined a sedative.

Witnessing the execution were reporters for The Oklahoman, The Associated Press, the Tulsa World, a Tulsa television station and the online news site NonDoc.

The execution came as corrections officials are still dealing with damage from a tornado that struck Saturday, June 7. The entrance for executions at the penitentiary had boards up where the storm destroyed windows.

The roof of the warden's mansion is sagging where a massive tree fell into it. The mansion was already under renovation.

The storm downed trees across McAlester and knocked a wall off one brick building. The street in front of the building was still closed Thursday.

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Florida executes man for raping and killing a young woman in 1994

 The 21st Execution of 2025

Anthony Wainwright, 54 convicted of raping and killing a woman three decades ago after kidnapping her from a supermarket parking lot was executed  on June 10, 2025 in Florida. The execution was the second of the day, reported NBC News.

Wainwright received a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was convicted in the April 1994 killing of 23-year-old Carmen Gayheart, a mother of two young children, in Lake City.

The execution began about 6:10 p.m. Wainwright’s shoulders shuddered a couple of times, and he blinked and took several deep breaths before becoming completely still at 6:14 p.m.

Wainwright was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m., according to Byran Griffin, a spokesman for Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Wainwright made a final statement, but the words were inaudible from the witness room.

He is the sixth person put to death in Florida this year, and another execution is scheduled for later this month. The state executed six people in 2023, but only carried out one execution last year. There were four executions scheduled around the country this week, including another one on Tuesday in Alabama. A temporary stay was issued Monday for an execution scheduled for Thursday in Oklahoma.

Richard Hamilton, the other man convicted in Gayheart’s killing, was also sentenced to death. But he died on death row in January 2023 at the age of 59.

Gayheart’s sister said before the execution that three decades is too long to wait for justice.

“It’s ridiculous how many appeals they get,” Maria David told The Associated Press, adding that each step of the appeals process reopened her family’s wounds. “You have to relive it again because they have to tell the whole story again.”

Wainwright and Hamilton escaped from prison in North Carolina, stole a green Cadillac and burglarized a home the next morning, taking guns and money. Then they drove to Florida and when the Cadillac began to have problems in Lake City, they decided to steal another vehicle.

They confronted Gayheart, a community college student, on April 27, 1994, as she loaded groceries into her blue Ford Bronco, according to court documents. They forced her into the vehicle at gunpoint and drove off. They raped her in the backseat and then took her out of the vehicle and tried to strangle her before shooting her twice in the back of the head, court filings say. They dragged her body several dozen yards from the road and drove off.

The two men were arrested in Mississippi the next day after a shootout with police.

A jury in 1995 convicted Wainwright of murder, kidnapping, robbery and rape and unanimously recommended that he be sentenced to death.

Wainwright’s lawyers had filed multiple unsuccessful appeals over the years based on what they said were problems with his trial and evidence that he suffered from brain damage and intellectual disability.

Once his execution was scheduled, his lawyers argued in state and federal court filings that his execution should be put on hold to allow time for courts to hear additional legal arguments in his case.

In a filing with the U.S. Supreme Court, his lawyers argued that his case was “marred by critical, systemic failures at virtually every stage and through the signing of his death warrant.” Those failures include flawed DNA evidence that wasn’t disclosed to the defense until after opening statements, erroneous jury instructions, inflammatory and inaccurate closing arguments and missteps by court-appointed lawyers, the filing says.

The filing also said that a jailhouse informant who testified at Wainwright’s trial finally admitted last month that he and another informant had testified in exchange for lighter sentences, a fact that had not been disclosed to the defense.

The Supreme Court on Monday denied Wainwright’s several of his final appeals without comment.

His lawyers filed a last-minute effort to seek a stay of execution Tuesday morning, focusing on claims that he was improperly barred from hiring a lawyer of his choice under state law. The high court denied his request in the evening.

David, Gayheart’s sister, said she felt cheated that Hamilton died before the state could execute him.

She said she was “overcome with emotion” when she heard the governor had signed a death warrant for Wainwright. Her parents both died while waiting for justice to be served, she said.

“There’s nothing that would keep me from seeing this all the way through,” she said.

Her sister loved animals and surprised her by training to become a nurse rather than a veterinarian, David said. Gayheart was two years younger than her sister but became a mother first, and David said she marveled at her sister’s patience with her young children.

“She was here, she mattered, she should be remembered, and she was loved,” David said of her sister.

Over the years, she has kept a book where she put every court filing, from the initial indictment through the latest appeals.

“I’m looking forward to getting the last pieces of paperwork that say he’s been executed to put into the book and never having to think about Anthony Wainwright ever again,” David said.

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Alabama executes man by nitrogen hypoxia for 1988 murder

The  20th Execution of 2025

The state of Alabama has executed Gregory Hunt by nitrogen hypoxia for the 1988 murder of Karen Lane, reported Montgomery Advertiser.

A doctor pronounced Hunt to dead at 6:26 p.m. June 10, 2025. His death marked Alabama's third execution of the year.

Overall, Hunt is the fifth person to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia in Alabama. The state executed its first inmate by nitrogen hypoxia in 2024. Across the globe, organizations, including the Vatican, have protested the use of nitrogen hypoxia in execution, calling it cruel and unusual punishment.

Execution timeline

In the execution chamber, there is a digital clock, but the seconds are not visible. The following times are approximate.

5:52 p.m. The curtains to the death chamber were opened. Hunt was wrapped in a white sheet and strapped to a gurney. A mask was affixed to his face.

5:54 p.m. Hunt declined to give any last words. He made what appeared to be a peace sign with his left hand.

5:56 p.m. Hunt began taking deep breaths.

5:57 p.m. He began gasping and lifted his head. His entire body began convulsing.

5:59 p.m. Hunt turned his head and then lifted his head. Hunt's head fell back, and he groaned loudly.

6 p.m. Hunt moved his head and gasped. He continued intermittently gasping for the next several minutes.

6:04 p.m. Hunt appeared to take his last breath.

6:19 p.m. Hunt had remained still for the past 15 minutes. His left fist remained clenched. The curtains to the death chamber were closed.

Victim's family: 'End of a nightmare'

John Hamm, the Alabama Department of Corrections commissioner, defended nitrogen hypoxia as a humane way to execute people in Alabama.

Hamm said that five of Lane's family members witnessed the execution, and Hamm read a statement from her family.

"... Make no mistake, this night is not about the life of Greg Hunt," the family said in the statement. "This night is about the horrific death of Karen Sanders Lane, whose life was so savagely taken from her. Karen was shown no mercy. She was not given a second chance. Karen was shown no grace. This is also not about closure or victory. This night represents justice and the end of a nightmare that has coursed through our family for 37 long years."

Gov. Kay Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall released statements in support of Lane and her family.

“Decades ago, Karen Lane, at only 32 years old, experienced unimaginable final hours of her young life," Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement. "Tonight, the state carried out the lawfully imposed punishment for Gregory Hunt, who is undeniably guilty.

"And after his last-minute attempts to evade justice, he has faced the consequences of his evil crimes against Karen Lane, actions he has admitted to, even in a letter to the victim’s heartbroken father. Alabama stands with Karen Lane, and we pray her loved ones can finally find peace and closure.”

Marshall called Hunt's execution long overdue and expressed his confidence in Hunt's guilt.

“Karen deserves more than silence," Marshall said in a statement. "She deserves to be remembered for who she was, and yet some have made this case about her killer, barely mentioning her name. That is not justice. That is a disgrace. Karen Lane was a daughter and a sister. She was a human being. And tonight, we honor her by speaking the truth and by refusing to let it be buried under political theater.”

On the day of Hunt's execution, he was visited by two of his attorneys. He ate a breakfast of biscuits, eggs, oatmeal and fruit punch and a lunch of bologna, carrots, black-eyed peas, a roll, rice and gravy and fruit punch. Hunt refused a dinner and did not request any special items.

He had no phone calls June 10 and had no witnesses to his death.

More: James Osgood Execution Alabama executes James Osgood for 2010 rape and murder

The death of Karen Lane

Hunt beat Lane to death Aug. 2, 1988 in her home in Cordova. He was charged with sexual abuse, burglary and capital murder.

Hunt admitted murdering Lane but denied that he sexually abused her, even filing a final appeal May 23, claiming he did not sexually abuse Lane. The appeal requested a stay in his execution to allow the court time to process his argument.

Court documents show Hunt beat Lane with his hands, feet and a bar stool. She had 62 individual external injuries to her body. Internally, Lane had more than 20 fractures to her ribs and rib cage, a broken sternum, a lacerated liver and injuries to her aorta.

She died of blunt force trauma and bruising of the brain.

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CREATORS: Prosecuting Parents for Unsafe Sleep Environments

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
June 9, 2025

Every year in this country over 4,500 babies die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Children's Hospital of Philadelphia defines SIDS as "the sudden and unexplained death of an infant under one year of age." SIDS is one of the leading causes of death in babies from 1 month to 1 year of age. It seems to plague otherwise healthy infants, usually during sleep time.

Several states have infant safe sleep laws. In Pennsylvania, the legislature enacted a specific law requiring parents to follow the sleep recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The law provides, "Infants shall be placed in the sleeping position recommended by the AAP." In 1992, the AAP recommended, "Infants should be placed in the supine position for every sleep until the child reaches 1 year of age."

During a 2007 committee hearing on the proposed Pennsylvania legislation, Eileen Carlins, the Director of Support and Education for SIDS of Pennsylvania, told legislators, "Over and over in my job I keep hearing the same thing, they didn't know, they didn't know."

In an effort to educate new parents, the law requires hospitals, birthing centers and health care practitioners to provide educational materials, then ask the parents to sign off on a certification that they received the information.

Delaware, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Colorado have similar laws, but Pennsylvania has taken it a step further. The state is prosecuting parents for failure to provide safe sleep environments. There has been prosecution of parents in other states like Virginia and Indiana for accidental suffocations and "overlays" where a parent sleeps next to an infant and rolls onto the infant, causing death by suffocation.

According to a recent article in Spotlight PA, a nonpartisan investigative journalism website, two sets of Pennsylvania parents face felony charges after police say their infants died while in "unsafe" sleep positions.

While experts and family advocates agree babies should sleep on their backs without anything in the crib, should simply failing to follow the recommendations amount to murder-three or involuntary manslaughter?

In one case, according to newspaper reports, back in May of last year, police in Lebanon County, Pa., responded to the Penn State Health Hershey Medical Center for the death of a three-month-old infant. Police said that the child's mother, Gina Strause, found the child unresponsive inside his crib.

According to police documents, "(Gina) related she went to get the child inside his crib to feed him and that was when she observed he was cold to the touch and appeared blue and she immediately called 911 and performed CPR until EMS arrived."

Police charged Strause, 40, and her husband, David, 42, with endangering the welfare of children, involuntary manslaughter and recklessly endangering another person. According to police, Strause said she placed the child back in his crib between 1:00 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. "on a 'pillow' and he was placed on his stomach (prone)."

In a second case, 19-year-old Natalee Michele Rasmus is facing murder charges for the death of her infant in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Rasmus is charged with third-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment in the death of her one-month-old daughter in October of 2022.

An autopsy determined the infant's death was caused by asphyxia due to mechanical compression.

Although parents in Pennsylvania are informed of safe sleep environments — being provided a pamphlet and signing a certification may not be enough, and certainly shouldn't be the basis for criminal charges.

An ongoing study by Johns Hopkins University is analyzing the use of an infant sleep assessment tool and motivational interviewing to enhance parent communication on safe sleep.

While the study is still recruiting participants, researchers hypothesize it will improve effective communication on sleep practices, reducing SIDS risk.

There is even research published in eBiomedicine that has identified a potential biomarker for SIDS. Yet, parents devastated by the death of an infant child face the wrath of the criminal justice system.

Nancy Maruyama, the executive director of Sudden Infant Death Services of Illinois, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about safe-sleep practices told Spotlight PA,

"To charge them criminally is a crime, because they have already suffered the worst loss."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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