RALEIGH, N.C.—North Carolina’s highest court is reviewing whether justice means the death penalty for a survivor of El Salvador’s blood-soaked civil war of the 1980s who strangled and then decapitated his estranged wife. The state’s Supreme Court hears oral arguments Monday on whether the state can execute 41-year-old Juan Carlos Rodriguez of Winston-Salem for the 2010 murder of his wife, Maria. North Carolina is rare among southern states in that it hasn’t had an execution in more than a decade because of various legal challenges. Rodriguez’s children told investigators their father beat and bloodied Maria Rodriguez after she told them she was leaving in November 2010. Monday’s hearing comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this spring that states needed to use current medical standards in deciding whether a killer is so mentally disabled he can’t be executed.

Source: thestar October 08, 2017 11:37 UTC