ESECUZIONE IN OKLAHOMA

  WASHINGTON, 24 LUG �Randall Cannon, 42 anni, �' stato messo a morte nel carcere di McAlester, in Oklahoma, nella serata di martedi'.

 Cannon non ha fatto nessuna dichiarazione, prima di ricevere l'iniezione letale. Il delitto era stato compiuto nel 1985: la vittima mori' il giorno dopo essere stata ritrovata con il corpo bruciato per due terzi.

   Poche ore prima dell'esecuzione, la Corte Suprema americana aveva respinto un appello di Cannon, basato su una sentenza della stessa Corte in base alla quale spetta alle giurie, e non ai giudici, comminare la pena di morte.

   Cannon aveva ammesso di avere assistito al delitto compiuto da un suo complice e di non avere fatto nulla per impedirlo.

   Ma la giuria aveva creduto che egli avesse avuto un ruolo piu' attivo nel rapimento e nell'omicidio.

   Il suo complice era gia' stato messo a morte l'anno scorso.

   Cannon e' la terza persona uccisa con l'iniezione letale in Oklahoma quest'anno e la 51.a da quando la pena capitale e' stata reintrodotta.

OKLAHOMA - execution

Randall Eugene Cannon executed for 1985 slaying of 84-year-old woman

Randall Eugene Cannon was executed Tuesday for the 1985 slaying of an 84-year-old woman who was abducted from her Oklahoma City home, badly beaten and burned.

 Cannon, 42, was pronounced dead at 6:05 p.m. after receiving a lethal combination of drugs.

 The state's 3rd execution this year and its 134th in history came after Cannon's appeal for a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected.

 Cannon was sentenced to die for the 1985 killing of Addie Hawley, who was abducted from her Oklahoma City home the night of June 24 and found hours later nude and incoherent in a vacant lot.

 She had been beaten and had severe burns over 60 % to 65 % of her body. Authorities say Hawley, who died the next day, had moved 10 to 15 feet while burning.

 "Of the 80 or 90 homicides I've worked in the last 21 years, when you consider only cases with single victims, this was the meanest killing I've ever been associated with," said Lou Keel, an Oklahoma County prosecutor who prosecuted Cannon.

 Cannon, who was raised in Tulsa and had a history of drug use, admitted he watched co-defendant Loyd Lafevers commit the crimes but did nothing to stop them. However, the state argued and the jury found that Cannon played a more direct role in Hawley's death.

 Cannon also pleaded no contest to charges related to the June 25, 1985, beatings of an 81-year-old woman and her granddaughter. Prosecutors allege Cannon and Lafevers, who was executed in January 2001, assaulted and robbed 2 other women around the same time.

 Cannon appealed to the Supreme Court Monday, arguing that justices' June ruling requiring that juries not judges hand down death sentences indirectly affected his case.

 That ruling reinstated an older case requiring that every fact-finding decision in a trial be made beyond a reasonable doubt, said Cannon's attorney Jack Fisher.

 That means juries applying capital punishment must find that aggravating factors in support of death outweigh beyond a reasonable doubt mitigating ones against death, Fisher said. Oklahoma's standard only requires that one outweigh the other, he said.

 But justices, who were asked to apply that ruling retroactively to older cases like Cannon's, declined to hear the case.

 About a dozen relatives of Hawley and Cannon's other victims came to McAlester to witness Cannon's execution, the 1st held since the state changed the time from 9 p.m. Only Fisher and his wife came for Cannon.

 Cannon ate his last meal about noon while he waited to hear if the Supreme Court would grant his stay.

 The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 4-0 on July 9 to deny Cannon's request for clemency.

 The state executed David Wayne Woodruff on Jan. 31 for the 1985 killing of an Oklahoma City jeweler. Woodruff's accomplice was executed Jan. 29.

 On June 25, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals granted convicted killer David Jay Brown a 30-day reprieve after he alleged that prosecutors withheld information supporting his defense. Brown was to be executed that night for the 1988 murder of his former father-in-law.

 Cannon becomes the 51st condemned inmate to be put to death since the state resumed capital punishment in 1990.

 Cannon also becomes the 37th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 786th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.