EU Urges Texas Governor To Halt Executions

The European Union on Tuesday urged the governor of Texas to halt executions in the United States' busiest death penalty state.

In an unusual direct appeal, the EU said Governor Rick Perry should introduce a moratorium on the death penalty and stop the impending 400th execution since Texas resumed capital punishment in 1982.

The execution of Johnny Ray Conner by lethal injection for the shooting death of a Houston grocery store owner during an attempted holdup in 1998 is scheduled for this week.

"The European Union notes with great regret the upcoming execution in the State of Texas," the bloc said in a statement.

The death penalty is banned in the 27-nation EU, which also fights for its global abolition.

"The irreversibility of the punishment means that miscarriages of justice — which are inevitable in all legal systems — cannot be redressed," the EU said.

Meanwhile, China has announced that it will execute people who sabotage the nation's electricity supply, reversing recent steps to rein in widespread use of the death penalty.

Under a new legal interpretation by the Supreme People's Court, death can be ordered in extremely serious cases where people are killed or injured, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Executions can also be ordered when direct economic losses exceed 1 million yuan ($131,500), when power is cut for six hours or longer, affecting industrial production or more than 10,000 households, or where there are "other serious consequences that endangered public security," Xinhua said.

Xinhua and the court's official newspaper gave no explanation as to what prompted the legal interpretation or how serious a problem the sabotage of power supplies is in China.

Last month, the court said it would crack down on the uneven application of the death penalty in different regions.

Chinese courts are believed to order about 80 percent of the world's court-ordered executions — at least 1,770 people in 2005 and possibly many more.