Julie Bykowicz

Steven Oken's final days were carefully scripted in a 32-page state manual with eight appendixes. The state prison system's Execution Operations Manual establishes precise a sequence, starting 14 days before...

The Supreme Court cleared the way last night for Steven Oken to be put to death by lethal injection, lifting a federal court order upheld hours earlier that would have...

The legal struggle surrounding condemned killer Steven Oken's fate moved at a furious pace yesterday, as a federal judge delayed the execution -- and attorneys for the state promptly appealed...

Steven Oken and his mother talk on the phone nearly every day, and she visits him every week. But in 17 years of conversations about such varied topics as local...

Dawn Marie Garvin would be 37 years old now, and her family has no doubt that she'd have a house full of kids and a successful accounting career. She'd be...

Next week's scheduled execution of Steven Oken presents a difficult case for all but the most resolute opponents of the death penalty. He fits none of the categories for which...

The state's highest court is to hear oral arguments today on a motion to delay the scheduled execution of convicted murderer Steven Oken. Oken's lawyers filed the motion last week...

It was a speech like no other that Rabbi Rex Perlmeter had given -- delivered inside a Baptist church and pressing the argument that the death penalty is "killing the...