Gregory Bryant-Bey, 53, died by lethal injection at 10:41 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

Bryant-Bey's execution proceeded after the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied his request for a 60-day reprieve. He had wanted more time to present additional information about his case to Gov. Ted Strickland, who denied clemency Tuesday.

Bryant-Bey was the second inmate put to death in Ohio since the end of an unofficial national moratorium on executions that began last year while the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Kentucky's lethal injection procedure.

Bryant-Bey was convicted in the Aug. 9, 1992, robbery and killing of Dale Pinkelman, who owned a sports collectibles and coin shop.

He also faced a death penalty in the Nov. 2, 1992, killing of Peter Mihas, owner of The Board Room restaurant in downtown Toledo.

After police arrested Bryant-Bey for Mihas' death, similarities between the two crimes led to charges in Pinkelman's slaying.

A jury recommended life in prison for Bryant-Bey in the Mihas killing.

"The petitions raise issues of statewide importance, implicating not only California's marriage laws but also the initiative process and the Constitution itself," Attorney General Jerry Brown argued in his filing.

"This court can provide certainty and finality in this matter," he said.

Proposition 8, which passed with 52 percent of the vote earlier this month, overturned the high court's May decision legalizing gay marriage in California. The measure inserts language into the constitution limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

Gay and civil rights groups, the city of San Francisco and other plaintiffs have asked the court to void the measure on the grounds that voters did not have the authority to make, what they say, is a fundamental constitutional change.

There is no deadline for the justices to decide whether they'll take the cases.

The litigation has made unwitting allies of supporters of the same-sex marriage ban and the attorney general, who voted against the proposition. Over the summer, anti-gay marriage groups sued Brown after his office changed the measure's wording to reflect that it would take away a right that same-sex couples then had.

About 60 people, led by a contingent from the New Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam, met at the Lamar County Courthouse on Monday to bring attention to the death of Brandon McClelland. The groups later returned with about 200 protesters. Afterward, dozens of people chanting "No justice, no peace!" marched to a nearby church for a meeting.

Authorities say two white suspects purposely ran over McClelland, who is black, following an argument on the way home from a late-night beer run in September. McClelland's body was torn apart as it was dragged some 70 feet beneath a pickup truck near Paris, a city about 95 miles northeast of Dallas with a history of tense relations between blacks and whites.

The death came 10 years after James Byrd was killed in Jasper, another eastern Texas town. Byrd was chained to the back of a pickup by three white men and dragged for three miles.

Bryan Stanley had claimed to be a prophet sent to cleanse St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Onalaska when he gunned down parish priest John Rossiter, lay minister Ferdinand Roth Sr. and church custodian William Hammes in 1985. He was angry the priest was allowing girls to give Scripture readings during Mass.

Stanley, who suffered from psychosis, was found not guilty by reason of mental disease and was committed indefinitely to Mendota, a state psychiatric hospital in Madison.

The District 4 Court of Appeals said state lawyers failed to prove that releasing Stanley, 53, would present a danger to himself or the public. The decision overturns a ruling by a La Crosse County judge who had denied Stanley's request for release.

Ferdinand Roth Jr., a retired police supervisor in La Crosse, Wis. and son of one of the victims, blasted the decision. He recalled that Stanley testified at a hearing last year there was not a 100 percent guarantee he would always take his medicine.

In two lawsuits, the Republican National Committee directly challenged post-Watergate restrictions on the ability of parties and candidates to work hand-in-hand on political campaigns and the law Congress passed in 2002 banning unlimited contributions know as "soft money."

Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. "Mike" Duncan said in an interview that the suits were designed to "strengthen the Republican Party and bring a more level playing field to campaign finance."

At issue are two distinct laws — one passed in the aftermath of the Watergate abuses of the early 1970s and the other a six-year-old ban on soft money. Both laws have been upheld by the Supreme Court, but since then the court has a new Chief Justice in John G. Roberts and a new justice in Samuel Alito.

The lawsuits come after the defeat of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, a fierce opponent of soft money and one of the authors of the 2002 legislation that banned the parties from raising unlimited money from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.

The RNC lawsuit said the total ban on soft money amounts to a violation of the First Amendment's guarantees of free speech and association.

Critics say the suit is merely an attempt by the RNC to test the law against a reconstituted Supreme Court.

"This effort to go to the Supreme Court appears to be based on the idea that we have different justices so the prior decisions should just be thrown out, and that is just dead wrong," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a campaign money watchdog group.

The RNC wants to be able to raise unlimited contributions for "non-federal" activities — that is, for expenditures unrelated to presidential, U.S. Senate or House of Representative elections. The money, the complaint says, would be used to help elect Republicans to state offices, to finance congressional redistricting efforts by state Republican parties following the 2010 census, and to finance lobbying efforts on federal legislative issues.

The RNC's effort to permit fundraising for state parties and state candidates would reverse a key component of the 2002 law that McCain helped write with Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and House members Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Martin Meehan, D-Mass.

Under that law, the national parties can only raise money under federal fundraising restrictions. The law banned the national parties from raising so-called soft-money — that is, unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions or individuals. If the national parties can raise money for state parties or for state candidates, they would adjust that fundraising to state limits, some of which are far more lenient than federal law.

Attorney Joe Sandler told a panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday that his clients' lawsuit against the federal Drug Enforcement Administration should move forward so that the farmers might have a chance to use their state permits to grow hemp for seeds and oil. The lawsuit was dismissed in U.S. District Court.

At the heart of the dispute is whether the farmers — state Rep. David Monson and Wayne Hauge — can cultivate hemp under North Dakota laws without violating the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Hemp is related to the illegal drug marijuana, and under the federal law, parts of an industrial hemp plant are considered controlled substances.

Sandler argued that while hemp plants might fall under the federal law, the law doesn't apply because the parts of the plant that could be considered a drug would never leave the farms. He also underlined the differences between marijuana and the crop the farmers want to grow, saying the judge who dismissed the case incorrectly treated marijuana and hemp as the same thing.

Industrial hemp is legally grown in several countries, including Canada, and the U.S. imports many products made from hemp seed, oil and fiber. The plant has much lower concentrations of the psychoactive chemical THC found in marijuana plants.

Melissa Patterson, a Justice Department attorney, told the appeals panel that Congress does have the power to regulate the crop in this case and that Congress has determined through the Controlled Substances Act that the plants, whether used for drugs or not, should be restricted.

Patterson also argued that the farmers must, as directed by Congress, first go through a registration process with the DEA to grow hemp rather than taking the issue to court. The farmers' registration request with the DEA is still pending.