In McAlester, Scott Allen Hain was executed for burning...

In McAlester, Scott Allen Hain was executed for burning Michael Houghton, 27, and Laura Lee Sanders, 22, alive in a car trunk in 1987, when he was 17. His death came about 2 hours after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a stay. Hain, 32, was pronounced dead at 8:39 p.m. In an unusual move, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in late Thursday to overturn a stay that had been issued by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Before the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the execution to proceed Thursday evening, the federal appeals court in Denver earlier Thursday had for the 2nd time in 2 days blocked Hain's execution. Thursday's 7-2 decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came about 6 hours before Hain's originally scheduled 6 p.m. execution at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Instead of allowing the execution to proceed, 9 judges of the Denver-based court were to hear arguments May 6 on Hain's claim that his lawyers were entitled to be paid from federal funds to represent him at a 2nd state clemency hearing. The Supreme Court's 5-4 vote illustrated the court's bitter division over capital punishment for people who commit crimes as juveniles. The decision to allow the execution came from the court's conservatives: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. Hain becomes the 5th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Oklahoma, the 60th till 1976, and the 23rd in the USA. Oklahoma is now tied with Missouri, as only Texas (301) and Virginia (87) have executed more condemned inmates since America re-legalized the death penalty on July 2, 1976.