Word: bishops
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Bishop is the third person to walk that road in the U.S. since 1967.* According to the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund, 550 men and six women in 28 states now remain on death rows. Who may die next is uncertain, since none of the cases has yet exhausted its appeals. But opponents of the death penalty have little doubt that others will soon be executed, and that, though Bishop's case is unusual, his demise further hurts their cause. ''Each execution makes it easier to kill the next time,'' says former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey...
...Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah, and last May, John Spenkelink was electrocuted in Florida. Spenkelink, unlike Gilmore and Bishop, went to his death involuntarily...
Thus ended the life of Jesse Walter Bishop, 46, heroin addict and career criminal who committed his first armed robbery at age 15 and passed 22 of his last 27 years behind bars. With similar steadfastness, Bishop had denounced all efforts made on his behalf by civil libertarians to stay his execution for the 1977 murder of Newlywed David Ballard, 22, during a casino stickup in Las Vegas. Indeed, Bishop waived his right to a jury trial and immediately pleaded guilty to the killing...
When his public defenders attempted to argue that their client did not deserve a death sentence because of ''mitigating circumstances'' (Bishop won a Purple Heart while serving as a paratrooper during the Korean War and became hooked on heroin only after being administered morphine by medics for a battle injury), he promptly fired them...
Terming the death penalty ''an occupational hazard'' in his line of work, Bishop refused to authorize an appeal of his case even when given the chance to do so minutes before entering the gas chamber. Said he: ''This is just one more step down the road of life that I've been heading all my life...