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Ranchers.net

Supreme Court grants stay of execution

The Associated Press

ATMORE -- A man convicted in a 1982 kidnap, rape and murder was granted a stay of execution Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court little more than an hour before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection.

The court's brief order arrived about 4:45 p.m. and did not go into detail on why it granted the stay.

Callahan was sentenced to death for the 1982 murder of Jacksonville State University student Rebecca Suzanne Howell, who was abducted from a coin laundry and raped before being strangled and dumped in a creek.

Her mother, Verna Coheley of Ohatchee, and sister, Karen Greer of Goodlettsville, Tenn., had arrived to witness the execution. Prison system spokesman Brian Corbett said a corrections officer quoted them as saying it was "cruel and unusual" for them to have to go through the ordeal.

On Sept. 25, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge filed by two Kentucky death row inmates over that state's lethal injection method.

Lethal injections, devised as a humane alternative to electrocution and the gas chamber, have come under attack in recent years amid reports that the three-drug cocktail doesn’t always work as quickly as intended and that inmates are subjected to excruciating pain before they die.

No executions have taken place since the high court agreed to hear the case.
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