U.S. Hits Death Penalty Milestone

Convicted killer Kenneth Lee Boyd was executed early Friday, becoming the 1000th prisoner put to death since the United States reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Boyd, 57, was pronounced dead at 2:15 a.m., said state Department of Correction spokeswoman Pam Walker. His death came after both Governor Mike Easley and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene and stop the execution.

"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," Easley said in a statement issued a few hours before the execution.

Boyd did not deny that he shot and killed Julie Curry Boyd, 36, and her father, 57-year-old Thomas Dillard Curry in 1988. 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 told The Associated Press in a prison interview that he wanted no part of the infamous numerical distinction of being the 1000th prisoner executed. "I'd hate to be remembered as that," Boyd said Wednesday. "I don't like the idea of being picked as a number."

After watching Boyd die, Rockingham County (N.C.) Sheriff Sam Page said the victims should be remembered. "Tonight, justice has been served for Mr. Kenneth Boyd," Page said.

"What I would ask you to do is not forget the victims of this crime, Ms. Boyd, Mr. Curry, their family, their kids, their grandkids," Page said. "Pray for them. Pray for them and their healing."

Boyd's death rallied death penalty opponents, and about 150 protesters gathered outside the prison.

"Maybe Kenneth Boyd won't have died in vain, in a way, because I believe the more people think about the death penalty and are exposed to it, the more they don't like it," said Stephen Dear, executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty.

"Any attention to the death penalty is good because it's a filthy, rotten system," he said.

The Supreme Court in 1976 ruled that capital punishment could resume after a 10-year moratorium. The first execution took place the following year, when Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in Utah.

During the 1988 slayings, Boyd's son Christopher was pinned under his mother's body as Boyd unloaded a .357-caliber Magnum into her. The boy pushed his way under a 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 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," Foster said.

In the execution chamber, Boyd smiled at daughter-in-law Kathy Smith, wife of a son from Boyd's first marriage, and a minister from his home county. He asked Smith to take care of his son and two grandchildren and she mouthed through the thick glass panes separating execution and witness rooms that her husband was waiting outside.

In his final words, Boyd said: "God bless everybody in here."

Boyd's attorney Thomas Maher, said the "execution of Kenneth Boyd has not made this a better or safer world. If this 1,000th execution is a milestone, it's a milestone we should all be ashamed of."

In Boyd's pleas for clemency, his attorneys said he served in Vietnam where he operated a bulldozer and was shot at by snipers daily, which contributed to his crimes.

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.