Time to take out the trash

CBS News – A Georgia board Monday denied condemned killer William Earl Lynd’s clemency bid, paving the way for him to likely become the nation’s first inmate put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court held that lethal injection is constitutional. He was convicted of fatally shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore, two days before Christmas in 1988. Prosecutors at Lynd’s trial said Moore suffered a slow agonizing death, regaining consciousness twice after successive gunshot wounds to the head at the home she and Lynd shared in Berrien County, in south Georgia.

The medical examiner testified that Moore was still alive when Lynd stuffed her into the trunk of her car and took a drive. Lynd confessed to authorities that when he heard her thumping around in the trunk, he opened it and fired the final lethal shot. The allegation that Lynd kidnapped Moore before she died was an essential “aggravating” circumstance that made him eligible for the death penalty. It also helped prosecutors show the slaying was premeditated.

Meanwhile, a Mexican-born Texas prisoner whose death sentence set off an international dispute and a U.S. Supreme Court rebuke of the White House, also received an execution date Monday. Texas State District Judge Caprice Cosper set the Aug. 5 lethal injection for 33-year-old Jose Medellin for his participation in the gang rape and strangulation deaths of two teenage girls 15 years ago in Houston when they stumbled upon a gang initiation rite.