Vermont

Wal-Marts get state listed on most-endangered list

A preservation group put Vermont on its list of America’s most endangered places Monday, warning that this New England state’s small-town charm is threatened by Wal-Mart.

Vermont is the only state ever to make the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual list in its entirety.

The state has four Wal-Marts — all small by Wal-Mart standards — and Vermont preservationists say the company is planning to enlarge two of them and open five new ones. Wal-Mart said it has firm plans only for one new store, in St. Albans.

“Vermont is uniquely a state of small towns, and many of these downtowns would be decimated by this,” said Trust President Richard Moe. “A lot of small businesses just disappear in the face of a huge Wal-Mart.”

Washington, D.C.

Preliminary FBI stats show violent crime decline

Violent crime declined in 2003 despite a third consecutive yearly increase in homicides, according to preliminary FBI statistics released Monday.

The violent crimes — rape, robbery, aggravated assault and homicides including murder and manslaughter — dropped 3.2 percent compared with 2002, fueled mostly by sharp declines in rape and assault.

Homicide was the only category on the increase, rising nationwide last year by about 178 cases, or 1.1 percent. In the previous two years, murder and manslaughter edged up 1 percent in 2002 and 2.5 percent in 2001.

Washington, D.C.

Supreme Court lets inmate pursue lethal injection appeal

The Supreme Court ruled for the first time Monday that a death row inmate could pursue a last-ditch claim that lethal injection was unconstitutionally cruel.

In a rare unanimous decision on a capital punishment case, justices sided with a convicted Alabama killer who said his veins were so damaged from drug abuse that executioners might have to cut deeply into his flesh to administer the deadly drugs.

Lethal injection is used in 37 states, largely because it’s considered more humane than the electric chair, firing squad, gas chamber or hanging. Criticism of the method has been building, however, and David Larry Nelson’s case led to a stark discussion at the court about a so-called “cut-down procedure” needed when problems complicate reaching a vein.

Justice Sandra O’Connor said the court was not going to “open the floodgates to all manner of method-of-execution challenges,” as Alabama feared. “Our holding is extremely limited,” she wrote.

Oklahoma

Prosecutors say Nichols key planner of OKC bombings

Terry Nichols contributed more to plans to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building than executed bomber Timothy McVeigh did, a prosecutor said Monday during closing arguments in Nichols’ state murder trial.

Nichols’ attorneys have argued that McVeigh set Nichols up to take the blame for the work of other, unidentified coconspirators in the Oklahoma City bombing plot. But prosecutor Lou Keel said Nichols was heavily involved in the plans from the beginning.

“Nichols was the biggest contributor,” Keel said.

Nichols, 49, is accused of 161 counts of first-degree murder.