Judges Grant Stays in 2 Executions

Judges granted stays of execution in two controversial Southern cases that were due to move to the death chamber this week. The execution by injection of a Florida murderer, Dan Patrick Hauser, 30, who has said he wants to die, was put on hold, at least temporarily, after a federal judge said he needed more time to review newly filed documents in the case. Hauser has a history of mental illness and has repeatedly tried to commit suicide. And Georgia’s Supreme Court granted an indefinite stay to a mentally ill prisoner, Alexander Williams, 32, scheduled to die for the murder of a teenage girl, a state official said. He is a paranoid schizophrenic who dresses up like the Lone Ranger and talks with invisible frogs in his prison cell.