SPOKANE, Wash. -- The curtain rose to reveal James Homer Elledge, lying strapped to a gurney under a

[stevedeshazer]

blue blanket.

Executions rare in Evergreen State

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_washington_executions.html

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At 12:39 a.m., the execution team started releasing chemicals that ran along IV tubes into Elledge's body. After what seemed an eternity, the curtain dropped. Elledge was pronounced dead at 12:52 a.m., completing his sentence for the 1998 stabbing and strangulation death of Eloise Fitzner, 47, at the Lynnwood church where he was a janitor.

A similar scene is likely early Friday when Cal Coburn Brown enters the execution chamber of the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Unless he wins another stay, Brown will become the first person since Elledge to be executed in Washington, and the 78th since the first in 1904.

It will be only the fifth execution since 1993, and the third in a row by lethal injection. All the others were by hanging.

</snip>

Our government should not kill people. Period.