American Notes LOUISIANA

Convicted Murderer Benjamin Berry, 31, went to the electric chair June 7, the first person executed in Louisiana in 28 months. Two days later Alvin Moore Jr., 27, executed for a rape-robbery-murder, became the second. Three days after that, Jimmy Glass, 25, convicted of shooting a rural couple to death, took the chair with a quip: "I'd just as soon be fishing." Then last week Glass's accomplice Jimmy Wingo, 35, declared both innocence and forgiveness ("I do still love you all in Christ") as he became the fourth person to be executed in the state in ten days.

All four Louisiana executions had been delayed because the condemned -- three of them white -- argued in part that the death penalty was disproportionately applied to killers of whites. But the Supreme Court rejected that argument in April, resolving the last major constitutional question about capital punishment. Louisiana would have racked up five executions in eleven days, but the Supreme Court, to allow a possible review, stayed the electrocution of Mass Murderer Leslie Lowenfield.