Convicted murderer put to death in fourth US execution this week
A South Carolina man convicted of a 2005 double murder was put to death by lethal injection on Friday, the fourth execution in the United States this week.
Stephen Stanko, 57, was pronounced dead at 6:34 pm (2234 GMT) at the state prison in Columbia, the South Carolina Department of Corrections said in a statement.
Stanko had a choice between his method of execution -- firing squad, electric chair or lethal injection.
He chose lethal injection.
Stanko was convicted of the 2005 murders of his girlfriend, Laura Ling, 43, and Henry Turner, a 74-year-old friend.
He also raped Ling's teenage daughter and slit her throat but she survived and testified against him at trial.
In a final statement read by his attorney, Stanko said he was "truly sorry for the pain and loss that I caused.
"Sorry is never enough but that does not mean it should not be said."
Stanko was the fourth Death Row inmate executed in the United States this week.
President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and called on his first day in office for an expansion of its use "for the vilest crimes."
John Hanson, 61, was executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma on Thursday for carjacking and kidnapping Mary Bowles, 77, from a mall in the city of Tulsa and then shooting her to death along with a witness, Jerald Thurman.
Hanson had been serving a life sentence for bank robbery in a federal prison in the state of Louisiana but the Trump administration approved his transfer to Oklahoma so he could face the death penalty.
Anthony Wainwright, 54, convicted of the 1994 murder of Carmen Gayheart, 23, a nursing student and mother of two young children, was put to death by lethal injection in Florida on Tuesday.
Gregory Hunt, 65, convicted of the 1988 rape and murder of his girlfriend, Karen Lane, 32, was executed by nitrogen gas in Alabama that same day.
There have been 23 executions in the United States this year: 18 by lethal injection, two by firing squad and three by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a facemask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.
The use of nitrogen gas as an execution method has been denounced by UN experts as cruel and inhumane.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others -- California, Oregon and Pennsylvania -- have moratoriums in place.
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CNN
9 hours ago
- CNN
South Carolina executes a man serving death sentences in 2 separate murders
CrimeFacebookTweetLink Follow A South Carolina man sent to death row twice for separate murders was put to death Friday by lethal injection in the state's sixth execution in nine months. Stephen Stanko, 57, was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. He was executed for shooting a friend and then cleaning out his bank account in Horry County in 2005. Stanko also was serving a death sentence for killing his live-in girlfriend in her Georgetown County home hours earlier, strangling her as he raped her teenage daughter. Stanko slit the teen's throat, but she survived. The execution began after a 3 1/2 minute final statement where Stanko apologized to his victims and asked not to be judged by the worst day of his life. Witnesses could hear prison officials asking for the first dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital which was different from previous executions. Stanko appeared to be saying words, turned toward the families of the victims and then let out several quick breaths as his lips quivered. Stanko appeared to stop breathing after a minute. His ruddy complexion quickly disappeared and the color drained from his face and hands. A prison employee asked for a second dose of pentobarbital about 13 minutes later. He was announced dead about 28 minutes after the execution started. Three family members of his victims stared at Stanko and didn't look away until well after he stopped breathing. Stanko's brother and his lawyer also watched. Attorney Lindsey Vann, who watched her second inmate client die in seven months rubbed rosary beads in her hands. Stanko was leaning toward dying by South Carolina's new firing squad, like the past two inmates before him. But after autopsy results from the last inmate killed by that method showed the bullets from the three volunteers nearly missed his heart, Stanko went with lethal injection. Stanko was the last of four executions scheduled around the country this week. Florida and Alabama each put an inmate to death on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Oklahoma executed a man transferred from federal to state custody to allow his death. The federal courts rejected Stanko's last-ditch effort to spare his life as his lawyers argued the state isn't carrying out lethal injection properly after autopsy results found fluid in the lungs of other inmates killed that way. Also South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster refused clemency in a phone call to prison officials minutes before the execution began. A governor has not spared a death row inmate's life in the previous 48 executions since South Carolina reinstated the death penalty about 50 years ago. Stanko is the sixth inmate executed in South Carolina in nine months after the state went 13 years without putting an inmate to death because it could not obtain lethal injection drugs. The South Carolina General Assembly approved a firing squad and passed a shield law bill which allowed the suppliers of the drugs to stay secret. In his final statement, Stanko talked about how he was an honor student and athlete and a volunteer and asked several times not to be judged by the night he killed two people. 'I have live for approximately 20,973 days, but I am judged solely for one,' Stanko said in his final statement read by his lawyer. Stanko apologized several times to his victims and their families. 'Once I am gone, I hope that Christina, Laura's family and Henry's family can all forgive me. The execution may help them. Forgiveness will heal them.' Stanko ate his last meal on Wednesday as prison officials give inmates a chance to enjoy their special food before their execution day. He ate fried fish, fried shrimp, crab cakes, a baked potato, carrots, fried okra, cherry pie, banana pudding and sweet tea.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
SC killer who strangled mom in front of daughter, dies by lethal injection
Shortly after 6 p.m. on Friday, double-murderer Stephen Stanko was executed by lethal injection inside of the state death chamber at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina. His execution took place amid renewed scrutiny on the procedures for South Carolina's lethal injection and firing squad. Attorneys allege that only two of three bullets hit Mikal Mahdi, the last man to be executed, not fully destroying his heart. While state officials deny this was the case, Stanko said he was forced to choose lethal injection. Prison officials only this week revealed that it is performed with two doses of the sedative pentobarbital. Stanko received a rare double death sentence in two separate trials in Georgetown and Horry counties. The first for the murder of his girlfriend, librarian Laura Ling, who he strangled to death in front of her 15-year-old daughter and another for the murder of his friend, Henry Turner. In attendance at the execution were two members of Turner's family, a member of the Ling family, an agent of South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, a representative of the 15th Circuit Solicitor's office, one of Stanko's attorneys, Lindsey Vann, the corrections department communications director Chrysti Shain and three media witnesses. The family members appeared stoic as Vann read Stanko's three and a half minute long final statement where he apologized to the victims and his family. Stanko described many of the things he had accomplished before his life turned to crime: being an honor student and an athlete, leading school clubs, excelling at math, volunteering at an orphanage and saving a child from drowning in Augusta, Georgia. 'None of this is meant to brag. It is only meant to show that I am not only what people see me as now — in this moment,' Vann read on Stanko's behalf. 'We execute people in this country for moments in their lives ... I have lived approximately twenty thousand nine hundred and seventy-three days but I am judged solely for one.' Stanko, already a convicted felon, committed the two murders during a 24-hour crime spree, which prosecutors say came as a series of cons he was running were on the verge of being exposed. He was also convicted of the rape of Ling's daughter, who he made watch him strangle Ling, as well as armed robbery for the thefts of Ling and Turner's cars and bank cards. After his statement was read, tears appeared to fall down Stanko's cheeks and he appeared to mouth 'thank you,' at Vann, said Tommy Cardinal with My Horry News, one of the media witnesses. The execution began at 6:06 p.m. after all final appeals were rejected and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a supporter of the death penalty, denied Stanko's clemency petition. As a female voice announced over loudspeaker that the first dose of pentobarbital was being injected, Stanko, who was wearing glasses, appeared to glance at the his family members, and those of his victims. Almost immediately, color seemed to drain from Stanko's face and hands, reported Loren Korn of television station WMBF, one of the media witnesses. His mouth appeared to move but it was impossible to make out the words, said Jeffrey Collins, a reporter with the Associated Press who was witnessing his 13th execution. Stanko took a few deep breaths and then his lips fluttered with several small puffing breaths. His breathing appeared to stop after a minute, the media witnesses reported. At 6:20, the female voice announced that a second dose of pentobarbital was being administered. It is first time that the department of corrections has made such an announcement, which Shain said was in an attempt to be 'as transparent as possible.' He was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m., the witnesses said. Stanko's final meal was fried fish, fried shrimp, crab cakes, a baked potato, carrots, okra, cherry pie, banana pudding and sweet tea. 'If my execution helps with closure and/or the grieving process, may they all move forward with that being completed,' Stanko's final message read. His teachers in Goose Creek remembered him as a bright child and good student. But brain injuries were a fact of his life, the first occurring during his birth. He sustained multiple head injuries playing sports and one while defending a classmate from a brutal physical attack. Multiple experts at his first trail testified that Stanko was a 'genius,' according to court filings. But the injuries left him with serious damage to his left frontal lobe, part of the brain that regulates emotions. As a result, he had a psychopathic disregard for morality. He could seem calm and collected one moment before suddenly snapping, flying into a violent rage the next, experts testified at the sentencing phase of his murder trials. He was previously sentenced to prison for kidnapping after he assaulted and tied up a girlfriend, gagging her with a bleach soaked rag in 1996. While serving that sentence, Stanko appeared to do well with the structure of prison. He wrote measured letters to The State newspaper arguing for sentencing reform, and he co-authored a book, 'Living in Prison: A History of the Correctional System,' with two professors. After serving eight years of a ten-year sentence, Stanko was released and moved to the Grand Strand. He met Ling, 41, and later the 74-year-old Turner, who attended a computer class that Ling taught. But Stanko struggled to find his footing. He moved in with Ling in Murrells Inlet and wanted to write another book about his prison experience. But he struggled to hold down a job and allegedly ran a number of scams around the Myrtle Beach area from the libarby where Ling worked. He would claim to be a paralegal, lawyer or investigator who could help people get access to money, according to court filings. On the night of April 8, 2005, he attacked Ling and then raped her 15-year-old daughter. Dragging the teen into the room with an injured Ling, he held her down while he strangled her mother with a free hand. He then slashed the teen's throat twice, almost severing one ear. When Stanko fled with Ling's car and a debit card, the teen managed to crawl to a phone to call 911. Stanko fled to Turner's home, selling Turner a sob story that his father had just died. The next morning, he killed Turner, shooting him through a pillow pressed up against his back as the older man stood in front of a mirror. Prosecutors say that Stanko then stole Turner's truck and money, leading police on a multi-day manhunt through the Southeast. After stopping at the Blue Marlin restaurant in Columbia, Stanko was ultimately arrested at an Augusta mall following a tip from a woman who recognized him at a bar. His attorneys said that he was 'insane' at the time of the killings. That argument did not move jurors, who sentenced him to death for the murder of Ling in 2006 and again for Turner's murder in 2009. In the weeks before his death, Stanko and his attorneys launched the most comprehensive constitutional challenge yet to the state's death penalty laws. Stanko's attorneys say that he was forced to chose lethal injection in order to save himself from an excruciating death on the electric chair, South Carolina's default method of execution. Stanko would have chosen to be executed by firing squad, his attorneys say, but he feared extreme pain and suffering following the execution of Mikal Mahdi. Mahdi was shot by a firing squad April 11, but he appeared to continue breathing for 80 seconds after he was shot. An autopsy found only two bullet entry wounds in Mahdi's body even though the firing squad had three gunmen. Attorneys for the state and the Department of Corrections maintain that all three guns were fired and that two bullets must have entered at the same spot on Mahdi's skin and traveled along the same path. Left only with lethal injection, Stanko's attorneys raised concerns that there were problems with this execution method because autopsies had indicated that two other condemned men were given a total of 10 grams each of pentobarbital. In public statements and in court filings, the corrections department had indicated that their policy was to administer just one five gram dose. Autopsies have also indicated that the men suffer from a pulmonary edema, a condition where the lungs fill with fluid leading to a painful death where the condemned feel like they're drowing. But during an emergency federal court hearing on Wednesday, June 11, lawyers for the corrections department stated, for the first time, that the department's policy is to inject a second 5 gram dose of pentobarbital if any electrical activity is still detected in the heart after ten minutes. The department's execution protocols remain hotly contested. South Carolina law prohibits the disclosure of almost any information about the execution process. As a result, lawyers for men on death row say they do not have enough information to evaluate whether the state's executions are cruel and unusual. Outside the prison gates, protesters held a vigil opposing Stanko's execution. Andrew Voyles drove to Columbia from Charlotte, North Carolina, to attend his first protest against the death penalty. He previously supported the practice. 'The death penalty is something that I used to be in favor of, but as I've come more into my faith as a Christian, as I lean more into my identity as a conservative, I've realized that those two parts of myself that I hold very important are diametrically opposed to the death penalty,' Voyles said. Additional reporting contributed by Colin Elam.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
South Carolina executes a man serving death sentences in 2 separate murders
A South Carolina man sent to death row twice for separate murders was put to death Friday by lethal injection in the state's sixth execution in nine months. Stephen Stanko, 57, was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. He was executed for shooting a friend and then cleaning out his bank account in Horry County in 2005. Stanko also was serving a death sentence for killing his live-in girlfriend in her Georgetown County home hours earlier, strangling her as he raped her teenage daughter. Stanko slit the teen's throat, but she survived. The execution began after a 3 1/2 minute final statement where Stanko apologized to his victims and asked not to be judged by the worst day of his life. Witnesses could hear prison officials asking for the first dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital which was different from previous executions. Stanko appeared to be saying words, turned toward the families of the victims and then let out several quick breaths as his lips quivered. Stanko appeared to stop breathing after a minute. His ruddy complexion quickly disappeared and the color drained from his face and hands. A prison employee asked for a second dose of pentobarbital about 13 minutes later. He was announced dead about 28 minutes after the execution started. Three family members of his victims stared at Stanko and didn't look away until well after he stopped breathing. Stanko's brother and his lawyer also watched. Attorney Lindsey Vann, who watched her second inmate client die in seven months rubbed rosary beads in her hands. Stanko was leaning toward dying by South Carolina's new firing squad, like the past two inmates before him. But after autopsy results from the last inmate killed by that method showed the bullets from the three volunteers nearly missed his heart, Stanko went with lethal injection. Stanko was the last of four executions scheduled around the country this week. Florida and Alabama each put an inmate to death on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Oklahoma executed a man transferred from federal to state custody to allow his death. The federal courts rejected Stanko's last-ditch effort to spare his life as his lawyers argued the state isn't carrying out lethal injection properly after autopsy results found fluid in the lungs of other inmates killed that way. Also South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster refused clemency in a phone call to prison officials minutes before the execution began. A governor has not spared a death row inmate's life in the previous 48 executions since South Carolina reinstated the death penalty about 50 years ago. Stanko is the sixth inmate executed in South Carolina in nine months after the state went 13 years without putting an inmate to death because it could not obtain lethal injection drugs. The South Carolina General Assembly approved a firing squad and passed a shield law bill which allowed the suppliers of the drugs to stay secret. In his final statement, Stanko talked about how he was an honor student and athlete and a volunteer and asked several times not to be judged by the night he killed two people. 'I have live for approximately 20,973 days, but I am judged solely for one,' Stanko said in his final statement read by his lawyer. Stanko apologized several times to his victims and their families. 'Once I am gone, I hope that Christina, Laura's family and Henry's family can all forgive me. The execution may help them. Forgiveness will heal them.' Stanko ate his last meal on Wednesday as prison officials give inmates a chance to enjoy their special food before their execution day. He ate fried fish, fried shrimp, crab cakes, a baked potato, carrots, fried okra, cherry pie, banana pudding and sweet tea.
