The United States is virtually certain this week to execute its one thousandth prisoner since 1977 with two inmates scheduled to die by lethal injection in North Carolina and South Carolina.
Convicted murderer Kenneth Boyd, set to be executed by lethal injection tomorrow
Death-penalty experts said North Carolina Governor Mike Easley is unlikely to spare Kenneth Boyd, who is scheduled to die tomorrow for killing his estranged wife and her father in 1988 in front of his children.
A spokesman for South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford said the governor's legal team is not going to recommend clemency for Shawn Paul Humphries, convicted of killing a convenience store owner in a robbery. Humphries is also scheduled to die tomorrow.
If they proceed the executions will mark the 1,000th and 1,001st since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty almost 30 years ago.
That distinction would have fallen on Virginia prisoner Robin Lovitt, but Governor Mark Warner commuted his sentence to life in prison on Tuesday because a court clerk violated state law by destroying DNA evidence that might have proved Lovitt innocent.
A Gallup poll last month showed 64 per cent of Americans supported the death penalty, the lowest level in 27 years, compared with a high of 80 per cent in 1994.