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In 2002, Marco Allen Chapman killed two small children. His lawyers, whom he dismissed in 2004 when he entered a guilty plea, questioned his competence over that decision.

However, Chapman sounded remarkably coherent when he told a judge, “I say we should go ahead and get it over with and done. … I should be able to do what I want to do and go ahead and have the execution put forth.” He says he doesn’t want to “drag out the misery” for himself and his victims’ families.

If the Supreme Court agrees with Chapman — and so far it has, rejecting the defense team’s arguments that his request for a speedy execution amounts to state-assisted suicide — he could be executed as early as November 21.

Richard Cooey’s argument that he was too obese to safely execute has been proven wrong. Cooey’s life was terminated today at 10 o’clock in Ohio, USA.

41-year-old Cooey was 5-foot-7 and weighed 267 pounds at the time of his execution, having gained 70 pounds since his incarceration at the age of 19. He and his attorneys had insisted that that made him “morbidly obese” and that his weight and bulk would interfere with the normal lethal injection procedure, making it cruel and unusual punishment.

Speaking of cruel and unusual, Cooey and a friend, Clinton Dickens, threw chunks of concrete off a bridge onto Interstate 77, striking a car carrying Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery. Pretending to rescue the women, Cooey and Dickens instead took them to a secluded field where they spent three-and-a-half hours raping and torturing them, including Cooey carving an “X” into the stomachs of both women. They then beat the women to death.

Troy Anthony Davis was scheduled to be executed yesterday at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, in Jackson, Georgia, USA. Shortly after 5:00 PM, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a reprieve to Davis.

Davis had been convicted for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer, Mark MacPhail, who was shot while trying to break up a fight in a Burger King parking lot.

There was no physical evidence presented at Davis’ trial, but nine people claimed they saw Davis shoot MacPhail. Since that time, seven of those people have recanted their testimony, saying they were either coerced by police, by the man who really shot MacPhail, or were simply mistaken.

Davis has also received a lot of celebrity support, including pleas from actors Susan Sarandon and Harry Belafonte, former President Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Pope Benedict XVI, and even U.S. lawmakers, all of whom have petitioned Georgia to grant Davis a new trial.

MacPhail’s family is understandably upset with the stay of execution, since they believe Davis is guilty. As always, the question is, what if he’s innocent? How sure should we have to be before putting a man to death?

In 1986 Robert Chambers killed 18-year-old Jennifer Levin during an episode of rough sex in Central Park. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served 15 years in prison.

Now he’s been convicted of dealing cocaine and assaulting a police officer, and has been sentenced to 19 years. He could have faced a life term had his lawyer not reached an agreement with the courts.

Do you see something wrong here? 15 years for manslaughter, which was the maximum term because of discipline problems while in prison. 19 years to life for dealing drugs.

Is this indicative of the value we place on a person’s life?

Now we know why Alabama Governor Bob Riley refused to issue DNA testing orders for death-row inmate Thomas Arthur, even though he had granted a stay of execution: They can’t find the DNA to test.

Alabama’s Attorney General claims the evidence that could have exonerated Arthur is missing. Of course, missing doesn’t mean non-existent.

The state of Alabama doesn’t have laws requiring the preservation of evidence, but some local Alabama agencies — circuit court clerks and police units — do. According to reports by the Innocence Project, the state Attorney General’s office has made only cursory efforts to track down the evidence by contacting those other agencies. This would be consistent with their efforts in the case so far: they started looking for the evidence only six months ago, while Arthur has been requesting DNA testing for six years.