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California Sets State Age Record by Executing
76-Year-Old Man
 Jan.
17, 2006 - Despite being legally blind, nearly deaf and confined to a
wheelchair, Clarence Ray Allen, was executed by lethal injection this
morning at 12:38 in by the State of California, one day after his 76th
birthday. Allen, convicted in three murders, had pleaded the death
penalty was cruel and unusual punishment for someone so old and frail.
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Death Penalty Questioned for Elderly as New Records
Set in Senior Executions
Oldest in modern era executed last month, California
prepares for state record
Jan. 11, 2006 – Is it appropriate to execute the
old and infirm? That is a question asked by attorneys for Clarence Ray
Allen, nearly deaf, blind and wheelchair-bound, who will turn 76 the day
before he is to become the oldest person executed in California on Jan.
17. The plea does not seem to be helping Allen, as it failed to save
John B. Nixon Sr. in Mississippi, as he became, at age 77, the oldest
person executed in the United States since the death penalty was
reinstated in 1976.
Read more...
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The U.S. Supreme Court rejected
his last-minute
appeal.
Allen was California's oldest death row inmate to
be executed, and the second oldest in the United States since a ban on
capital punishment was lifted in 1976.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a
last-minute appeal filed by his attorneys on Monday to stop the
execution because of his age and ill health. Allen suffered from
diabetes, was legally blind and confined to a wheelchair.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected Allen's
appeal for clemency last week.
Allen was already a convicted murderer when he was
condemned in 1982 for paying a fellow inmate to kill three witnesses in
that case.
Mississippi still holds the
record for executing the oldest persons:
John B. Nixon Sr. at age 77. He was executed on Dec. 14, 2005.
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