In Huntsville, a ninth-grade dropout who worked as a roofer was executed for the rape, stabbing and strangling of a Liberty County woman more than 15 years ago. William Hamilton Little, 38, was condemned for the Dec. 3, 1983 murder of 23-year-old Marilyn Peter at her home in a rural area near Cleveland, about 30 miles northeast of Houston. Five of Ms. Peter's friends and relatives watched through a death chamber window as he was put to death. "Although we feel that nothing can justify the loss of our loved one, we are grateful in knowing that William Little will never be able to kill and destroy another innocent life,'' her family said in a prepared statement. The inmate had no formal final statement, but told prison officials before the drugs were administered that he didn't want to cause any problems. "I've been jealous of people who preceded me, they got to go home and I had to remain,'' he said. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case, upholding rulings of other federal courts. Authorities said the woman had been raped, stabbed more than 19 times, then raped again after she was dead. Her body was found later in the day by two workmen who were supposed to install a clothes dryer at her home. The workmen entered after they spotted blood on a door jamb and heard a child crying. Inside they discovered the victim's 2-year-old son on a kitchen counter. The child was not injured but the room was covered with blood and Ms. Peter's ravaged body was on the floor in the living room. "It was a very gory situation,'' said Liberty County District Attorney Mike Little, who prosecuted the case. "No question in my mind, I think this is one of the cases the death penalty is made for. Certainly in my opinion and in the jury's opinion, he earned the death penalty and he deserves what he gets,'' added Little, who is not related to the prisoner. Witnesses remembered William Little drinking and smoking marijuana the night before the murder, pulling a knife and trying to start fights and bragging about scalping and dismembering people. A witness identified Little as a man spotted in the doorway of Ms. Peter's home the night of the slaying. Police found blood-stained jeans and towels at his home. "There was a handprint on the inside of the door of her residence in blood that we were able to match up to his hand,'' the prosecutor said. "The bloody handprint on the door was certainly pretty powerful evidence.'' In a confession, Little told authorities he knew the victim because she had sold him marijuana. About two pounds of the illegal drug were found at her home by police. He also told police he killed Ms. Peter but contended the sex was consensual. "The autopsy revealed it was a rape beyond any question,'' the district attorney said. Little had a history of drug use and of using a knife in burglaries, was on probation at the time of his arrest for involuntary manslaughter and had been ordered to a halfway house for drug rehabilitation but refused to comply. He was one of two men who confessed to the crime but an indictment against the second man was dropped after it was determined he was mentally incompetent. During Little's appeals, a federal judge ordered DNA testing which eliminated the second man as a suspect but confirmed the likelihood that Little was the killer.

Scotty L. Moore was convicted of the 1983 murder of a night manager at the Airline Motel in Oklahoma City. Moore was an ex-employee of Alex Fernandez. Moore and his girlfriend and cousin, Vicki Caster robbed Alex, took him into the back room and Moore shot him while Caster cleaned out the money. Fernandez was found face down on the floor in a pool of blood with five bullets in the back of his head. It took the jury only one hour and twenty minutes to sentence Moore to death. Fernandez was survived by his wife and two sons, to whom he sent money in Pakistan. None of his family witnessed the execution.

Jordanian Jehad Taha was a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania. Whitney broke into Jehad's home and tried to rape his wife. Jehad tried to stop the rape and was stabbed 10 times. Jehad's wife escaped and screamed which alerted police officers who were investigating an attack that Whitney committed on another woman earlier in the evening. He was arrested at the murder scene as he was attempting to pull the knife out of Jehad's body. Whitney had a record of 25 juvenile arrests and 8 adult arrests.

Leslie Beasley was sentenced to die for the 1981 killing of a police officer, as well as another murder in 1980. Beasley was sentenced to death for the killing of Philadelphia Policeman Ernest Davis, who had been called to quell a disturbance at a North Philadelphia diner. The same year, he was sentenced to die for the shotgun slaying of Keith Singleton, 26, who was killed while riding his bicycle. No clear motive was found for that killing, but at his trial, Beasley was called a member of the "Dogtown Gang." Beasley committed his 1st murder at the age of 16 in what he once dismissed to a reporter as "just a gang situation." Beasley had a record of repeated assaults on police officers and had served 3 and a half years of a 10 year sentence for the earlier murder before being paroled. He went on to be arrested 9 more times and to father 6 children. Officer Davis, 33, had a 5-year-old son of his own when he was gunned down.

Billy Wayne Coble was sent to death row in 1990 after his conviction in the August 1989 shooting deaths of his estranged wife's brother, Waco police Sgt. Bobby Vicha, and parents, Robert and Zelda Vicha at their homes near Axtell. He also kidnapped his estranged wife, Karen Vicha, after killing her parents and brother and tying up Karen's daughter. Coble was despondent about the impending breakup of his third marriage and because he faced possible prison time on charges that he restrained Karen Vicha against her will on a previous occasion, prosecutors have said.

Christopher Beck told police that several days before the murders he formulated a plan to kill William Miller, 52, his former employer. On Monday, June 5, 1995, Beck traveled by bus from his home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Washington, D.C., arriving there at 6 p.m. The following morning Beck went to Arlington to the house shared by Miller, Florence Marks, 54, Beck's cousin, and David Kaplan, 34. He arrived at the house at 11 a.m., "walked around the perimeter," and then broke in through a basement window under the porch. Wrapping a sledge hammer he found in the basement with a cloth to "muffle the sound," he used the sledge hammer to batter a hole in a door to the first floor of the house. Beck then went to Miller's apartment and chose a .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol from several loaded guns Miller kept in the house; he rejected another larger caliber weapon because its report would be too loud. After loading a spare magazine for the pistol, Beck went to the basement and waited for Miller to return home. As Beck waited he became "nervous," but finally concluded, "I guess I'll go through with it." Later that afternoon, Beck heard the sound of someone entering the basement. Beck raised the pistol to "arm level," and, as the door opened, he closed his eyes and fired two shots. Beck said that when he opened his eyes, he saw Florence on the basement floor. Beck said, "you stupid bitch, why did you have to come home?" In an attempt to make it appear that Florence had been raped and robbed, Beck cut off most of her clothes and stabbed her in the right buttock. He threw a condom he had found in the washer onto the floor and, in a further effort to make it appear that Marks had been sexually assaulted, he kicked her and penetrated her vagina with a hammer. Beck reasoned that sexual assault evidence would lead the police to believe that the crime had been committed by a stranger and not by a family member. Beck then went back upstairs to the first floor. However, the condom had both his and Florence's genetic markers, indicating that he had truly raped Florence. About one hour later, Miller returned home. Beck was on the stairs leading to the second floor and hid behind the bannister. Miller remained downstairs for a while and then started up the stairs. Beck shot Miller in the face as he mounted the stairs. Miller fell down the stairs as Beck continued to shoot him, firing a total of five rounds at him. Beck put Miller's body in Kaplan's apartment and threw a blanket over the body, "because I got sick and tired looking" at it. Later that evening, but while it was still light outside, Kaplan returned home to find Miller's body lying in his room, Beck with a gun in his hand, and blood "all over." As Kaplan stared at the scene, Beck shot Kaplan in the back of the head. Beck fired "several times and [Kaplan] just wouldn't die." As Kaplan lay on the floor, he talked to Beck, saying, "hello, I'm awake, hello." Beck fired what he believed was a full magazine at Kaplan and then stabbed him in the head. Beck stated that he "just wanted [Kaplan] to stop having the pain." After he was stabbed, Kaplan appeared to have a "seizure" and then died. Beck went back through the house taking several guns and two bicycles. He also took cash from each of the victims. He took the keys to Miller's car, changed his clothes, loaded the car with the guns and bicycles, and drove to Washington, D.C., to see a girl. As he left the house, Beck waved to the next door neighbor. After a parking mishap in the District of Columbia in which Beck parked the car but neglected to engage the parking brake, and the car rolled into another vehicle, Beck drove home to Pennsylvania. Once there he hid the guns and "stashed" the bicycles with a friend. He "cleaned the car of all prints[,] wiped it all down," and abandoned it after covering the license plates. Beck was initially interviewed by Arlington County Police officers at his mother's home in Philadelphia. Beck at first claimed to have been transporting bicycles from Tennessee at the time of the murders. When a friend failed to corroborate Beck's alibi, Beck admitted to police that he had killed Marks, Miller and Kaplan. After his arrest, Beck was returned to Arlington, where he gave a full statement concerning the murders to police. During his statement to the police, Beck was given a chance to say something for himself; he said: That ah I know what is like to kill somebody, its one of the worst feelings you can live with that I don't know that it is pretty painful that is one of those things that you can't go to sleep and I'm so sorry that I did, I'm so sorry that I had all that anger built up, I should had went to a counselor or something could have prevented it. I don't know, I'm sorry but I know this is going to be pretty hard for people to believe what happened. In addition to giving that statement, Beck assisted the police in the recovery of the stolen car, guns, and bicycles. When Beck was 14, he was charged with aggravated assault after he pushed his high school teacher as he left her class. Beck subsequently was committed to the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare in 1991 after an incident in which he threatened to harm his former girlfriend and her parents. While in the jail segregation unit awaiting the present trial, Beck substituted disinfectant for mouthwash belonging to one inmate and struck another inmate. In addition, Beck wrote a document describing his feelings in which he incorporated the phrase: "I'm sorry but I love killing."

One of the death sentences that U.S. District Judge John T. Nixon reversed, prompting calls for his impeachment, was reinstated by a federal appeals court. A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 that Nixon wrongly reversed the conviction that Robert Glen Coe received for raping and murdering an 8-year-old girl in rural West Tennessee in 1979. The appeals court reinstated both the conviction and the death sentence that a Shelby County jury gave Coe in 1981 for the torture-murder of Cary Ann Medlin. In February 1981, Coe was convicted of the Labor Day 1979 kidnapping, rape and murder of 8-year-old Cary Ann. U.S. District Judge John Nixon in 1996 threw out Coe's convictions for 1st-degree murder, aggravated rape and aggravated kidnapping. Nixon's ruling -- which angered supporters of the death penalty -- wiped out Coe's death sentence for the murder conviction and his 2 life in prison sentences for the rape and kidnapping convictions. Coe told police in 1979 that he kidnapped the girl, sexually assaulted her and cut her throat. He also said that just before he killed her, she said to him, "Jesus loves you." He tried unsuccessfully to withdraw the confession and was convicted. Tennessee appeals courts upheld Coe's conviction. But Nixon threw it out, saying the trial jury was given improper instructions on when capital punishment should be applied, including on the issue of whether the killing was done with malice. Medlin's mother, Charlotte Stout of Greenfield, Tenn. said she was "really relieved" by the appeals court action, since Nixon's December 1996 ruling would have given Coe a new trial. "I couldn't imagine going through that again," Stout said. Coe admitted, three days after Cary Medlin disappeared in September 1979, that he lured her into his car as she rode a bicycle near her parents' home in Greenfield, Tenn. Coe, who had a history of mental illness, told authorities that he sexually molested the girl, then tried to choke her and, when that did not work, stabbed her and watched her bleed to death. Nixon reversed Coe's conviction and death sentence in December 1996 because of what he called errors the trial judge made in instructing the jury. Nixon said the judge at Coe's trial did not give the jury enough guidance when he defined the terms "heinous, atrocious and cruel," "reasonable doubt" and "malice." The 6th Circuit panel disagreed with Nixon on each of those points. Nixon has reversed five death sentences imposed by Tennessee juries, and higher federal courts have affirmed his rulings in four of those cases. But his reversal of Coe's conviction and death sentence stirred a grass-roots campaign, based in Greenfield, calling for his impeachment. Nixon has a well-known anti-death penalty stance and has accepted awards for such. Both houses of the Tennessee legislature jumped on the impeach-Nixon bandwagon, and Stout went to Washington to testify before a congressional committee. But Congress took no action against the judge. Nixon, 65, has now "taken senior status," or semi-retirement, as a trial judge.

On May 24, 1977, two Purolator guards, Russell Dempsey and Cecil Newkirk, left Phoenix in an armored van on their run to banks in Prescott, Sedona and Flagstaff. At the Bumblebee Road exit on Interstate-17, they were stopped by Michael & Patrick Poland, who were disguised as highway patrolmen and were driving a car fitted with emergency lights. The Polands took the guards captive and removed close to $300,000 in cash. On May 25, 1977, authorities found the abandoned Purolator van. That morning, Michael rented a boat at the Lake Mead marina and piloted the boat to a little used landing, where he met his brother. They put the bound guards into canvas bags, took them across the lake, and dumped them into the water. The bodies surfaced 3 weeks later in a cove on the Nevada side of the lake. The Polands were convicted in federal court on robbery and kidnapping charges, and in state court on the murder charges. The Polands stole about $280,000, but only $127,000 was accounted for when they were arrested the next year. UPDATE: 6/10/99 - Pinal County Superior Court Judge James Don today found Michael Poland competent to be executed Wednesday, rejecting arguments the convicted killer is mentally ill. Poland's defense attorneys argued earlier in the day that he suffers from severe delusions and that three experts found him incompetent for execution. But Assistant Attorney General Galen Wilkes argued that Poland, 58, could suffer from delusions but still be competent for the death penalty. All Poland needs to understand is that he was convicted of first degree murders in the slaying of armored-van guards Cecil Newkirk and Russell Dempsey on May 24, 1977, that he was sentenced to the death penalty, and that the crime and sentence are connected, Wilkes argued.

In November 1991, Douglas Christopher Thomas was sentenced to death for the November 1990 capital murders of Kathy and J.B. Wiseman. Thomas was 17 years old at the time of the crime. Thomas had been dating 14-year-old Jessica Wiseman, the daughter of Kathy and "J.B." for a while before the murders. Their relationship was serious and her parents did not approve. They pressured Jessica to break-up the relationship with Thomas, however, Jessica was unwilling to do so. She became angry with her parents and stated that she wished they were removed from her life. In his confession Thomas stated that he had smoked some marijuana on his way over to the Wiseman house on the night of the murders. He also carried with him a shotgun. He said Jessica let him in the window and they then arranged some drugs on the floor to make it appear to be an attempted robbery. Thomas then went down the hall to the Wiseman's bedroom and shot them as they slept. Thomas said Mrs. Wiseman did not die from the first shooting and Jessica implored Thomas to shoot her again. He did, killing her instantly.

Bruce W. Kilgore took part in the abduction and murder of a north St. Louis restaurant worker in 1986. Kilgore, of Berkeley, was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery in the death of Marilyn Wilkins. Marilyn, 54, was abducted Aug. 27, 1986, from the parking lot of Cristo's Restaurant on Riverview Drive. She had worked there as a salad maker and lived in St. Louis. Two days later, her body was found near the St. Louis Art Museum in Forest Park. She was stabbed repeatedly, and her throat was slashed. Prosecutors alleged that Kilgore held Wilkins while another man, Willie Luckett, stabbed her. Luckett was angry with Wilkins because she caused him to be fired from Cristo's. Wilkins got him fired from Cristo's by telling the boss that Luckett stole meat. Luckett was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Kilgore claims in his clemency application that his accomplice, Willie Luckett, killed Marilyn Wilkins in 1986. Luckett is serving life in prison. Kilgore says he sat in the car while Luckett pulled Wilkins into the alley in suburban St. Louis and slashed her throat. Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon said he is convinced that Kilgore was the stabber. "That's what the testimony was in the case,'' Nixon said. "The jury had the opportunity to look at the evidence and they made a very reasoned decision here.'' Nixon said there are many reasons why Luckett got life in prison and Kilgore got the death sentence. "Luckett testified, Kilgore didn't,'' Nixon said. "Luckett had no prior convictions, Kilgore did. Luckett spoke on his own behalf in the penalty phase, saying he was impaired by drugs and alcohol. Kilgore didn't. This was a brutal murder in which the jury saw the evidence and made the hard call."

Stan Faulder was sentenced to death in 1977 for the murder of Inez Phillips, age 75, which took place during the burglary of her home in Gladewater, Texas in 1975. Mrs. Phillips was the matriarch of a prominent Texas oil family. The conviction was reversed on appeal. At the second trial, pivotal testimony came from an accomplice in the crime. Stan Faulder was again sentenced to death. He and a girlfriend robbed Phillips' home in the mistaken belief that there was a large sum of money in her safe. He signed a confession after his arrest. Her 1975 torture - in a failed attempt to find rumored jewels and cash - and murder were so savage that few residents can remember anything so horrible before or since in Gladewater. Phillips, a favorite schoolteacher and matriarch of a wealthy oil family, was covered in bruises from being beaten; her skull was crushed while she was still breathing. The generous patron of local charities who was often called "saintly" died only after being stabbed about 20 times with a knife taken from her kitchen. It was left embedded in her chest, cracking through bone to spear her body to her bed.

Brian Baldwin and Ed Horsely were sentenced to die for the murder of Naomi Rolon. In 1977, Naomi was on the way to visit her father in the hospital in North Carolina. Baldwin and Horsely kidnapped her only minutes after they escaped from a nearby prison. They commandeered her car and kidnapped Naomi, driving to Charlotte where they raped her and during the next 36 hours, forced her to strip off her clothes, raped, choked and stabbed her repeatedly then tried to kill her by running her over with her own car. They put her body into the trunk and then drove the car and abandoned it on a rural road in Monroe County, Alabama. They returned some time later, found Naomi alive still, assaulted her again and then killed her with an axe blow to the base of her head and hid her body. Both men later confessed to the murder after being arrested on unrelated charges. Horsely was executed in 1996.

On October 18, 1991, Jose Uderra and Juan Perez used a 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun to rob and murder Michael Sharp, 23. Perez had sold fake cocaine to Michael Sharp and he returned to get his money back. An argument ensued during which Perez grabbed Sharp and held him against the wall while Uderra shot him at point-blank range. Two people witnessed the murder from the window of their apartments and Uderra and Perez were arrested quickly. After their arrest, a friend whom they had given the shot-gun to contacted police and turned in the murder weapon.

A federal judge has imposed a new stay of execution for condemned child killer James Edward Wood. U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge blocked the scheduled June 24 execution date after attorneys for the admitted murderer pressed the appeal of his conviction and sentence in federal court. Sixth District Judge Peter McDermott set the execution date last month after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the case before lower federal courts reviewed it. Wood was sentenced to die for the 1993 slaying of 11-year-old newspaper carrier Jeralee Underwood. Wood, 51, pleaded guilty to kidnapping the girl while she was collecting from customers on her newspaper route and then molesting, murdering and subsequently sexually mutilating and dismembering her. He threw the body into the Snake River near Idaho Falls. Since initially pleading guilty and asking to be executed, the career criminal with at least 1 other killing and numerous other crimes on his record has been fighting for his life. The state Supreme Court has on 3 separate occasions upheld the circumstances surrounding Wood's conviction as well as his death sentence. While the high court agreed there were some procedural problems with the case, it concluded that they did not influence the outcome. The justices rejected Wood's challenges to a plea bargain meeting he was not present for, alleged conflicts of interest on the part of the judge and his lawyer who knew the girl's family and that his lawyer tried to use their Mormon religious belief in blood atonement to secure forgiveness to plead guilty and accept a death sentence. Wood is one of 20 murderers on Idaho's death row. The state has executed only one person since reinstating the death penalty 2 decades ago. Double murderer Keith Eugene Wells died by lethal injection in early 1994 after he dropped all appeals and demanded to be executed.

Coleman was sentenced to death in Ohio for fatally beating Marlene Walters, 44, in her Norwood home and strangling Tonnie Storey, 15, of Cincinnati. Both women were killed in July 1984. Tonnie's decomposing body was found in a vacant Cincinnati apartment building. No new execution dates have been set for Coleman in the Ohio cases. Coleman also has been sentenced to death in Indiana for killing Tamika Turks, 7, of Gary, Ind., and in Illinois for slaying Vernita Wheat, 9, of Kenosha, Wis. Miss Wheat's body was found in Waukegan, Ill., Coleman's hometown. Prosecutors said Coleman committed the slayings during a 7-week Midwest crime spree in 1984. His common-law wife, Debra Denise Brown, faces execution in Indiana in the death of Tamika Turks. Ms. Brown is confined in Ohio's prison for women at Marysville. She had been sentenced to death in the killing of Tonnie Storey, but former Gov. Richard Celeste commuted her sentence in January 1991 to life in prison.

The 4th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Richmond, Va. upheld the death sentences in the case of a man who stabbed a Moore County woman and her daughter to death in 1980. The 3-judge panel was unanimous in denying the appeal of David Junior Brown. Brown was convicted of killing Shelly Diane Chalflinch, who was 26, and her 9-year-old daughter, Christine. They were found stabbed hundreds of times in their apartment in the old employees quarters of the Pinehurst Hotel on Aug. 24, 1980. Larry Frye of Norfolk, Va., Ms. Chalflinch's brother, said "It has been a long wait for the family. We want justice to be served. We want the sentence carried out. His time is running out. Now it is a matter of months and days, not years." The evidence against Brown was overwhelming; his bloody palm print on Diane Chalflinchs bedroom wall, the trail of bloody foot prints leading from the Chalflinch's apartment to his, and his ring being found underneath Diane Chalflinch's liver. A Union County jury convicted Brown of the murders and sentenced him to die in December 1980. He remains on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh, the 4th longest stay of any inmate awaiting execution.

Ronald Clark was sentenced to death on Dec. 6, 1994, for the unprovoked murder of a complete stranger, 19-year-old Aineis Sunn Life, on Oct. 7, 1993.

Robert Walls was sentenced to die for the 1985 slaying of an elderly man whose bound and beaten body was found stuffed in a freezer. Walls was convicted of killing 88-year-old Fred Harmon after walking away from a halfway house where he was serving a burglary sentence. He and 2 men he met at the halfway house Tommy Thomas and Terry Wilson went to the victim's home to rob him. Harmon was bound with neckties, dragged to the kitchen and shoved into a freezer. The men shut the lid and piled a TV, a chair and other heavy objects on top. They took $100 and Harmon's car and took off for California, where they were eventually arrested. An autopsy determined that Harmon died of head injuries, suffocation and hypothermia. Walls said he was interested only in stealing money and Harmon's car. "My goal was never to kill this man," he said. "I told them, `Don't do it. Leave him alone.'" Wilson, 33, was convicted of 2nd-degree murder and is serving a life term in prison. Thomas, 31, is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to 1st-degree murder, robbery and burglary.