California executes oldest condemned inmate
California executed its oldest condemned inmate early today for arranging a triple murder 25 years ago to silence witnesses to another killing.
Clarence Ray Allen was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 12.38am local time (8.38am Irish time) at San Quentin State Prison, less than an hour after his 76th birthday ended at midnight.
Allen, who was mostly blind and deaf, could not walk, and suffered a nearly fatal heart attack in September only to be revived and returned to death row, was assisted into the death chamber by four correctional officers shortly after midnight.
He received the first of three injections at 12.20am local time (8.20am Irish time).
He then was given an extra dose of potassium chloride, the lethal chemical that stops the heart, at 12.35am local time (8.35am Irish time), and died minutes later, according to Corrections Department spokeswoman Elaine Jennings.
Allen was the second-oldest inmate executed in the United States since capital punishment resumed nearly 30 years ago, behind only a 77-year-old in Mississippi last month.
He was California’s 13th condemned inmate executed since state politicians restored capital punishment in 1977 and the third in the past 12 months.
“Allen deserves capital punishment because he was already serving a life sentence for murder when he masterminded the murders of three innocent young people and conspired to attack the heart of our criminal justice system,” state prosecutor Ward Campbell said.
Allen was serving his life term at Folsom State Prison when he gave a newly-paroled convict a hit list of seven witnesses who helped put him behind bars. He wanted the seven killed so they could not testify during his appeals.
Allen was executed after the US Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal that he was too old and too sick to be put to death without it constituting cruel and unusual punishment.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected similar arguments in denying Allen clemency on Friday.
“These infirmities are not simply the result of the passage of time or of old age, as some would suggest, but result from prison authorities’ deliberate neglect of his medical needs while in the state’s custody,” said Annette Carnegie, one of Allen’s lawyers.
