MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) — The number of executions is likely to total about 35 in the United States this year. The US has executed more people in every year since 1994, when 31 inmates were put to death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment. There were 39 executions in the country in 2013.
This is partially due to the difficulties with carrying out the death penalty and the high cost of prosecutions, according to the Center. "The states still have real problems up ahead with lethal injections. The drugs simply are hard to get, and the sources are mysterious, which always raises concern in the courts," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
Problems with executions in Oklahoma, Arizona and other states this year forced officials to review new combinations of lethal injection drugs, the Center posted on its official website.
Oklahoma has delayed the rest of its scheduled executions until 2015 “to allow time to obtain necessary drugs.”
Meanwhile the US Supreme Court has stayed the execution of Mark Christeson of Missouri, who was convicted of killing a woman and her two children in 1998 and was scheduled to die on Wednesday at midnight.
The highest court in the US supported his claims that his previous attorneys were inadequate. Among other things, those attorneys missed a 2005 deadline for a federal court appeal of Christeson’s conviction and death sentence.
New date has not been scheduled yet.
On Tuesday evening, a former gang member, Miguel Paredes, was put to death for the fatal shooting of three of his rivals in September 2000.
He received a lethal injection at the Texas death chamber in Huntsville.
Paredes was convicted along with two co-defendants, who received life sentences.
