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Oldest Californian Inmate Executed

The State of California executed its oldest inmate this last Tuesday. The blind, wheel-chair bound Clarence Ray Allen, 76, was pronounced dead at 12:38 a.m., despite protests from prisoner advocates that killing him violated the Constitution?s stance against cruel and unusual punishment. Allen, nearly deaf, suffered from diabetes and had a near fatal heart attack in September. Upon being revived, he was returned to death row.

Allen became the nation?s second-oldest inmate to be put to death since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. Last month, 77-year-old John B. Nixon became the oldest inmate in the U.S. executed since capital punishment resumed.

Allen was sent to prison for the murder of his teenage son?s 17-year-old girlfriend, who he feared would divulge information to police about a grocery-store robbery. Prosecutors claim that while behind bars, he tried to have key witnesses in the case killed. He was sentenced to death in 1982 for contracting a hit man killed a witness and two bystanders.