US? 1,000th execution spurs debate

Washington: A double murderer on Friday became the 1,000th prisoner executed in the US since the reinstatement of capital punishment, triggering national and global debate about death penalty.

The 1,000th execution took place in Raleigh, North Carolina on Friday, where Kenneth Lee Boyd received a lethal injection. He was convicted of killing his estranged wife and father-in-law in 1988.

Through the symbolism of its number, Boyd's execution cast a fresh spotlight on US capital punishment, which the Supreme Court brought back in 1976 after a nine-year unofficial moratorium.

US President George W Bush strongly supported the death penalty saying that "ultimately it helps save innocent lives".

"It was important that the death penalty be administered fairly and swiftly and surely and that helps it serve as a deterrent," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

It also came as executions in Singapore and Saudi Arabia sparked international concerns.

"God bless everybody in US," Boyd said in his last words from the death chamber to witnesses at Central Prison in North Carolina's state capital, Raleigh.

Boyd, who was 57, was a Vietnam War veteran with a history of alcohol abuse.

He was executed for killing his wife and father-in-law in 1988, in front of two of his children.

About 100 death-penalty opponents gathered on a sidewalk outside the prison. They held candles and read the names of the other convicts who have been put to death.

World Reaction

World reaction to Boyd's death was swift.

The European Union said it considered the death penalty 'cruel and inhuman'.

"It does not act as a deterrent and any miscarriage of justice, which is inevitable in any legal system is irreversible," the 25-nation bloc said in a statement issued by the EU president, Britain.

Thirty-eight of the 50 US states and the federal government permit capital punishment, and only China, Iran and Vietnam held more executions in 2004 than the US, according to rights group Amnesty International.

Improved DNA testing that has led to several criminal convictions being overturned has fueled doubts about the fairness of capital punishment.

Singapore, which has the world's highest execution rate relative to population, also carried out an execution on Friday with the hanging of Australian drugs trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van despite Australian government pleas for clemency.

In Saudi Arabia, murderer Ahmad al-Shaater became at least the 78th person put to death this year in the conservative kingdom.