The United States will likely reach this week the grim milestone of 1,000 executions of convicts since 1976, although capital punishment is declining with fewer juries choosing death sentences.

A convicted murderer was put to death by lethal injection in Ohio on Tuesday, making him the 999th executed inmate since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment 29 years ago.

John Hicks, 49, was killed by lethal injection in the prison of Lucasville, Ohio, state prison authorities said.

Hicks was sentenced to death over the 1985 murder of his mother-in-law and five-year-old step-daughter. He was under the influence of drugs during the killings.

According to a copy of his final statement before his execution, Hicks said: "First I'd like to thank my Heavenly Father for forgiving me of these crimes I committed and to the victims who lost their love ones, I know it has been 20 years of pain and hurt."

"Y'all endured the pain each day. I hurt too. I cared and loved them too. God has forgiven me. I'm sorry and I wish I could bring them back," he said.

"The real me began with a syringe in my arm and now today I have a needle in my arm. I have come full circle. I'm at peace with it," he said.

An execution was scheduled in Virginia for late Wednesday, but on Tuesday, Virginia Governor Mark Warner issued an eleventh-hour reprieve for Robin Lovitt, commuting his death sentence to life in prison without parole.

The governor explained his decision by the fact that evidence from Lovitt's trial was destroyed by a court employee, even though the state of Virginia was legally obligated to maintain physical evidence until a defendant has exhausted every legal post-trial remedy.

The grim milestone is now likely to be reached on Friday as North Carolina and South Carolina both have executions scheduled for that day.

"The impending milestone occurs at a time when the country is sharply moving away from the use of the death penalty," according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).

"The 1000th execution is a significant event in the nation's 30-year experiment with capital punishment, but it is not indicative of an expanding or strongly endorsed use of capital punishment," said DPIC director Richard Dieter.

"To the contrary, there is a wealth of evidence that the country is pulling back from the death penalty," Dieter said.

Statistics show a 50 percent decline in the number of death sentences since the late 1990s and a drop of 40 percent in executions since they peaked at 98 in 1999. There were 59 executions last year.

Moreover, the number of inmates on death row -- the prison wing for prisoners awaiting execution -- has declined each year since 2001.

Last month, a Gallup poll showed that 64 percent of Americans remain in favor of capital punishment, although 80 percent backed it in the 1990s.

The death penalty has also come under fire since inmates facing execution have been found innocent after their convictions, unmasking flaws in the judicial system. In the last 32 years, 122 death row inmates have been released.

Former Illinois governor George Ryan triggered a heated debate in January 2003 when he cleared the state's death row after learning of various cases in which innocent people were sentenced to die.

"More and more people understand that the death penalty makes mistakes, disproportionately affects the poor and people of color, doesn't deter crime, and is expensive, arbitrary, and immoral," according to 1000executions.org, an Amnesty International website.

The Supreme Court court barred executions of people with mental illness in 1986, people younger than 16 at the time of the crime in 1986 and people with mental retardation in 2005.

This year, it forbade capital punishment for people who were under 18 at the time of the crime.

The death penalty is currently on the books in 38 US states, but many seldom or never use it. The vast majority of executions take place in southern states.

More than half of all executions take place in three states: Texas has executed 355 people, Virginia has put to death 94 and Oklahoma another 79.

The US government also has the death penalty for federal cases, but it rarely uses it.

The most prominent US execution in recent years was that of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. He was executed in 2001 after a federal trial over the attack of a federal building in 1995 in which 168 died.

The first person executed after the Supreme Court's 1976 ruling was Gary Gilmore, who was killed by firing squad in Utah in 1977. It was the first execution in 10 years.

Gilmore was immortalized in American author Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song."

Copyright © 2005AFP

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