*Young had his sentence changed from death to life in prison without parole. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board wanted the sentence changed, and the state's governor agreed. Crimes that warrant the death penalty include pre-meditated murder, but that was not the case in Kevin Young's crime. He went into an illegal gambling hall planning to rob the patrons at gunpoint. After someone grabbed his partner-in-crime's gun, Young started shooting. This doesn't fit the definition of a pre-meditated murder, so he never should have been sentenced to death in the first place.

**Bower has been given a stay of execution while the courts decide if DNA evidence found on strands of hair and some cigarette butts will be tested. Bower has been on Death Row in Texas for 24 years, and during the time of his trial DNA testing was not routinely used. There has been much talk of Lester Bower's innocence, and many want to see him freed from prison. The only evidence at his trial (four men killed in a remote airplane hangar) was that he had been at the the crime scene location to buy an ultralight plane on the day of the murders. Anonymous tipsters have revealed the killings to be a drug deal gone bad, with Bower having nothing to do with it. Read more about his case in the Star-Telegram.

***Arthur was given a stay of execution after another inmate confessed to the crime in a handwritten note. Tommy Arthur was convicted of killing his married lover's husband, as she'd asked him to. The inmate who has now confessed, Bobby Ray Gilbert, is serving a life sentence for unrelated crimes. He says he met the wife in a bar, also started an affair with her, and was paid $2,000 to kill her husband.

*Sonnier was giving a stay of execution a mere 90 minutes before he was scheduled to die. The state of Texas still has cases questioning the legality of the current lethal injection protocols that it hasn't decided yet. So, even though the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled in April that lethal injections are OK legally, Sonnier's execution was delayed until Texas rules on its other lethal injection cases.

**Osborne is the subject of an interesting short article in TIME magazine. Click here to read it. It discusses the quality of his court-appointed lawyer, who was alleged to have said that Osborne, his own client, "deserves the chair" and called him racial names.

***Walton had his sentence commuted by the Governor of Virginia. He will no longer face execution. Instead, he will serve life in prison without the possibility of parole. This is because the Governor has determined that Walton is mentally ill to the point where he does not comprehend the reason why he would be put to death. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court changed the laws and made executing the severely mentally ill unacceptable.

****Hood has received a 30-day reprieve because Texas prison officials were not able to prepare his lethal injection in time to meet a midnight deadline set by the courts. His sentence is being appealed because the judge at his trial was having an affair with the prosecutor, which very likely could have swayed the judge's opinions.

*This is the first execution in 6 months! The Supreme Court has decided that current lethal injection procedures are not "cruel and unusual punishment" and are allowed under the Constitution.