3 Executions Held in One Day; 2 Stayed

Three men were executed today in Alabama, Utah and Florida, the most put to death in a single day since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Two other men scheduled to die today--one the confessed killer of 41 women--received stays.

Wayne Eugene Ritter was electrocuted in Alabama, Dale Selby Pierre died by injection in Utah and Beauford White died in Florida’s electric chair.

Serial killer Gerald Eugene Stano, who has claimed responsibility for killing 41 women, received an indefinite stay from a federal appeals court in Atlanta just 2 1/2 hours before he was to become the day’s second man put to death in Florida.

A fifth man, William (Billy) Mitchell, had been scheduled to be executed in Georgia today at 7 p.m. but state officials postponed his execution until next Tuesday to give defense lawyers more time to appeal his case.

Ritter’s execution in Alabama at 1:18 a.m. was the first of the day. Until today there had been 87 executions since 1976, but no more than two on the same day.

Ritter, 33, died for his part in the murder of a Mobile pawnshop owner during a 1977 robbery, although it was his partner who pulled the trigger.

The 3:13 a.m. execution of Pierre was the first in Utah since Gary Gilmore was killed by a firing squad on Jan. 17, 1977, in the country’s first execution after the 1976 Supreme Court reinstatement of the death penalty.

Pierre, 34, was one of the “Hi-Fi killers” who in 1974 forced five robbery victims at an Ogden, Utah, stereo shop to drink drain cleaner, then jammed a pen into one victim’s ear before shooting all five, killing three.

White, 41, was pronounced dead at 7:11 a.m. at Florida State Prison after 2,000 volts of electricity coursed through his body. He was the lookout in what at that time was the worst mass murder ever in the Miami area.