After narrowly dodging execution seven times, an Alabama inmate dubbed the “Houdini of death row” was put to death Thursday. The nation’s highest court then went on to lift the stay an hour and 15 minutes before Arthur’s death warrant expired at midnight. Arthur, who was first sentenced to death in 1983 when George Wallace was governor of Alabama, has spent more than 34 years on death row. After the crime, Wicker told police she was raped by a black man who knocked her unconscious and shot her husband. Arthur’s execution came a week after Alabama’s Republican-dominated House of Representatives approved a bill that would shorten the appeals process for death row inmates.

Source: Los Angeles Times May 25, 2017 23:36 UTC