U.S. Hits Death Penalty Milestone

He was not famous in life but Kenneth Lee Boyd's name likely will live on in the history books, as a milestone in the continuing debate over capital punishment.

Boyd, 57, killed his wife and his father-in-law in 1988 and at 2 a.m. Friday, he became the 1,000th person executed in the U.S. since a Supreme Court decision in 1976 paved the way for the reinstatement of the death penalty.

Boyd did not think he should get out of jail but he did want to live and tried every legal means to avoid execution.

Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Boyd's final appeal and several hours later, North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley denied Boyd's clemency request.

"Having carefully reviewed the facts and circumstances of these crimes and convictions, I find no compelling reason to grant clemency and overturn the unanimous jury verdicts affirmed by the state and federal courts," said Easley.

In his clemency petition, Boyd's attorneys argued his experiences in the Vietnam War — where, as a bulldozer operator, he was shot at by snipers daily — contributed to his crimes.

Boyd called the death penalty "nothing but revenge."

"I feel like I should be in prison for the rest of my life," he said. "I never expect to get paroled out if I got off."

Boyd spent his last hours visiting with family and friends and eating his final meal.

"We went in and told him the governor turned him down and he handled it well," said Boyd's lawyer, Thomas Maher, who was among a succession of visitors at the state's Central Prison.

Maher said Easley's decision left him with a feeling of "incredible sadness that we as a society think that taking someone's life is a response to violence."

"You get to know someone like Kenneth and his humanity and to have to tell them that they're going to be killed is a hard thing to do," Maher said.

One of Boyd's four grown sons, 35-year-old Kenneth Smith, had visited him as of 10 p.m. Two sons, but not Smith, were present when he shot and killed their mother and her father in a rage.

"He made one mistake and now it's costing him his life," said Smith, who visited with his wife and two children. "A lot of people get a second chance. I think he deserves a second chance."

Boyd did not deny having shot and killed Julie Curry Boyd, 36, and her father, 57-year-old Thomas Dillard Curry. Family members said Boyd stalked his estranged wife after they separated following 13 stormy years of marriage and once sent a son to her house with a bullet and a note saying the ammunition was intended for her.

Boyd's son Christopher was pinned under his mother's body as Boyd fired a .357-Magnum pistol into her. The boy pushed his way under a nearby bed to escape the barrage. Another son grabbed the pistol while Boyd tried to reload.

The evidence, said prosecutor Belinda Foster, clearly supported a death sentence.

"He rode around with the boys in the car, saying I'm going to go and kill everybody up there," Foster said. "He went out and reloaded and came back and called 911 and said 'I've shot my wife and her father, come on and get me.' And then we heard more gunshots. It was on the 911 tape."

As time ran out Thursday night, Boyd, in an Associated Press interview, was asked how he felt about becoming the 1,000th person to be executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty.

"I'd hate to be remembered as that," Boyd said Wednesday. "I don't like the idea of being picked as a number."

Execution No. 1,001 is scheduled for Friday night at 6 p.m., when South Carolina plans to put Shawn Humphries to death for the 1994 murder of a store clerk.

Thursday night, about 120 people gathered at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church for an interfaith prayer service, where they sang hymns and listened to Maher talk about Boyd's case. Afterward, they walked from the church to the prison, carrying candles and anti-death penalty signs.

"For what Kenneth is going through, for what his family is going through, for what the people he killed went through, it's the least I can do," said Steve Harvey, 37, of Raleigh.

Executions were carried out in 25 nations in 2004, according to the human rights group Amnesty International, which opposes the death penalty and rallied against it in cities around the world earlier this week.

In 2004, 97 percent of all executions were performed in just four countries: China, Iran, Vietnam and the U.S., with the majority of those coming in China.

Capital punishment, according to Amnesty International, is illegal in 86 countries and rarely imposed in another 25 countries, and is still used in 85 countries, although in 11 of those nations it is limited to "exceptional crimes" such as war crimes.

The death penalty debate frequently crosses national borders and this week triggered vigils and demonstrations in numerous cities in Australia, with bells and gongs sounding 25 times as an Australian citizen was executed in Singapore.

Nguyen Tuong Van, who was 25 years old, was hanged before dawn Friday for drug trafficking despite a formal protest to the government by Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Howard warned that the execution will damage relations between the two countries.

Nguyen received a mandatory death sentence after he was caught in 2002 at Singapore's airport on his way home to Melbourne carrying about 14 ounces of heroin.