Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is under fire for his decision to block the execution of man convicted of massacring four people at a Chuck E. Cheese in Aurora, Colo., two decades ago.

The Democrat has vowed not to sign a death warrant for Nathan Dunlap as long as he's in office, even though he declined to back an outright repeal of capital punishment two months ago.

Hickenlooper's decision on Dunlap — a day before lawyers for Aurora movie-theater massacre suspect James Holmes were due in court to challenge the death-penalty statute — infuriated some victims' relatives and law-enforcement officials.

"He should die," former Aurora Police Officer Dan Jones, who was the first to arrive at Chuck E. Cheese the night of Dec. 14, 1993, told NBC station KUSA.

"What he did was horrific. And now 20 years later...the governor passes the buck."

Bob Crowell, whose 19-year-old daughter Sylvia was one of those killed, called Hickenlooper a "chicken governor."

"We've waited an awful long time," Crowell said after a heated conference call with the governor on Wednesday. "It's a little like carrying a knife in my back. Today, that night was severely twisted."

Colorado has had the death penalty since 1977, although only one person has been put to death since then and there are just three on Death Row.

Helen H. Richardson / AP

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper says he will block the execution of convicted Chuck E. Cheese massacre killer Nathan Dunlap for as long as he is in office.

Dunlap, who ambushed the restaurant workers after he was fired, was scheduled for an Aug. 18 execution. Hickenlooper signed an executive order that will remain in effect at least until his first term ends in 2015.

The governor is running for re-election, and his critics accused him of trying to have it both ways on the divisive death penalty issue.

"It's not a perfect decision and I recognize that," he told KUSA. "But I think the reasons we are doing it this way override that lack of closure [for the victims' families]."

Hickenlooper said he did not support a bill to repeal capital punishment earlier in the year because he did not want to force that decision on his constituents.

At the same time, he said, he could not in good conscience let Dunlap be put to death when studies show execution is not a deterrent to crime and is often applied inconsistently.

“It’s hard to defend the death penalty," he said.

Dunlap's lawyers had asked Hickenlooper to commute his sentence to life in prison without parole, but he declined to do that, leaving open the possibility for his successor to overturn the executive order and send the 39-year-old to the death chamber.

Araphoe County District Attorney George Brauchler said Hickenlooper's move would please few people.

"One person will go to bed with smile on his face and that's Nathan Dunlap," Brauchler said.

Brauchler is seeking the death penalty for the man accused in Aurora's bloodiest crime, the murder of 12 people at a midnight "Batman" screening last July.

James Holmes' lawyers will be in court Thursday to challenge the capital punishment statue on the grounds that it makes an insanity plea untenable.

They said that certain conditions Holmes must accept to mount an insanity defense would hamper their ability to argue he should be spared death during the sentencing phase if he's convicted.

This story was originally published on Thu May 23, 2013 9:01 AM EDT

David McDaniel / The Oklahoman file

Oklahoma's Chief Medical Examiner Eric Pfeifer, seen here looking at an X-ray on March 21, said the toll from the tornado was "horrific."

Even to a man who deals in death every day, the toll from Monday's tornado was "horrific."

That was the word Dr. Eric Pfeifer, the chief medical examiner of Oklahoma, used Wednesday to describe the challenge of identifying and performing autopsies on two dozen victims.

After working around the clock for two days, Pfeifer emerged from the morgue exhausted, his voice hoarse, but full of praise for an overburdened staff that pulled together "to get this sad job done."

This week's disaster was not the first time Pfeifer had been confronted with nature's wrath. He had been on the job for just a few days when a twister tore across the station in the spring of 2011, killing 10 people.

"I can remember him saying that he had not ever had any cases just like that," recalled Doug Stewart, a University of Oklahoma pediatrician who sits on the board that brought Pfeifer from Minnesota to run the Sooner State's once-troubled M.E.'s office, based in Oklahoma City.

This week's storm was far worse. Less than 48 hours after the funnel cloud hit, though, Pfeifer's office had determined a cause of death for every victim, identified all of them and notified their families.

Members of his board of directors said such efficiency would have been hard to come by in the years before his arrival, when a backlog of unfinished cases hit 1,500 and the office lost its national accreditation.

"We were in a crisis when we hired Dr. Pfeifer," said Chris Ferguson of the Oklahoma Funeral Board. "But he seems to me to be a crisis manager."

Before coming to Oklahoma City, Pfeifer was a medical examiner at the Mayo Clinic and a coroner for Olmsted County, Minn. He was taking over an office that was underfunded, understaffed and filled with equipment "out of the 70s," Ferguson said.

"I knew what I was getting myself into when I accepted the Chief ME position here and have focused the last two years on campaigning for resources to rebuild this once esteemed practice as well as remaining actively engaged in the practice of medicine,"  Pfeifer said in an email to NBC News.

The result, Stewart said, has been "a remarkable turnaround."

He and others said Pfeifer shook up the staff, hired an administrative chief, and cut the backlog of unfiled death certificates in half. He successfully lobbied the state for $2.5 million in funding to double the number of pathologists from three to six and update equipment.

With 22,000 cases a year, the current staff of three pathologists was pushed to the limit even before the tornado.

When a doctor in the Tulsa office left, Pfeifer personally filled in and performed his autopsies, said Charles Curtis, deputy chief of the state Bureau of Investigations. After his deputy was bounced, he worked weekends so the office wouldn't fall behind. He refused to take an offered raise until office finances were in better shape.

"He leads by example," Curtis said.

When the bodies began arriving on Monday, Pfeifer said, his office was ready.

"This team is accustomed to working 2-3 times [the number of] nationally recommended caseloads every single day of the year," he said in the email. "This small team here didn’t even need to be asked to step up effort toward this recent horrific task."

When Ferguson went to the M.E.'s office on Tuesday — the day the tornado death toll was revised downward from 51 to 24 after double-counting in the chaotic first hours — he couldn't talk to Pfeifer.

"He was in the morgue," he said. "He's hands-on."

Outside the lab, Pfeifer is a motorcycle enthusiast and a tinkerer, a welder who likes to design and build machines and who built a wood-burning brick pizza oven in his Minnesota home, colleagues said.

"He's got a whole bunch of tools and stuff but it's all in storage because he can't find time to use it," Ferguson said.

Ferguson said it was relief that Pfeifer was in charge when Oklahoma suffered its biggest disaster in years. He said the number and age of the victims would have been tough for any doctor, even a custodian of death, to face.

"He has children around the same age as some of these victims," Ferguson said. "But I think he has the ability to set those emotions aside and get the job done."

Related:

• Two years later, Joplin, Missouri remembers storm
• Heartbreaking list of tornado victims spans from babies to seniors
• Victims' bodies set to be returned to families
• Why aren't there more storm shelters in Oklahoma?
• How to help Oklahoma tornado victims

Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains

Tannen Maury / EPA

A monster tornado hit Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon, leaving at least 24 dead.

Launch slideshow

Courtesy Angela Hornsby

Ja'Nae Hornsby, 9, (right) with her cousin Taylor, 14, in a photo taken over the weekend.

A 9-year-old girl who was "always smiling" is among the first of the Oklahoma tornado victims to be identified.

Third-grader Ja'Nae Hornsby was one of the students who perished when the twister demolished Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla. on Monday afternoon.

The Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has released the names of seven people killed in Monday's storm: Hornsby, 65-year-old Hemant Bhonde and Kyle Davis, Sydney Angle, Megan Futrell, Case Futrell and Antonia Lee Candelaria. The medical examiner confirmed the victims' names but has not released all of their ages.

Members of Hornsby's grieving family gathered Tuesday at a Baptist church in Oklahoma City to console each other after a night of anxious waiting ended with a hope-shattering call from the medical examiner's office.

Her aunt, Angela Hornsby, said Ja'Nae had spent last weekend at her house, playing with her cousins and “doing what little girls do.”

“They like to play dress-up,” she recalled. “My daughter puts jewelry on them and I took pictures of them dancing together and they took video. They were just happy.

"She was always happy, always smiling."

Courtesy Angela Hornsby

Ja'Nae Hornsby, 9, with her 2-year-old sister Jia, in a photo taken over the weekend.

On Monday, Ja'Nae went off to Plaza Towers Elementary School while her father, Joshua, headed into Oklahoma City for work.

As the tornado bore down on the suburb of Moore just before dismissal time, the father of two tried to race back home to get Ja'Nae from school and his two-year-old, Jia, from daycare, Angela Hornsby said.

The highways were jammed, though, and by the time he got to Moore, the grade school had been reduced to a pile of rubble, its parking lot transformed into a triage area for surviving students being pulled from the debris.

There was no sign of Ja'Nae, though. Her father and other relatives shuttled from shelter to shelter, “looking for answers,” Angela Hornsby said. She dialed all the hospitals that had taken the injured but could not find her niece.

As night fell, Joshua Hornsby went to St. Andrew’s United Methodist Church, where a dwindling number of parents waiting for reunions were camped out.

“He would not leave until he found out what happened to his baby,” his sister said. “They received a call while they were at the church this morning.

“My sister called to tell me. They were just sobbing.”

Joshua Hornsby also lost his house to the twister. His youngest child, who was picked up from daycare by her grandmother, survived.

Ja'Nae, whose mother died last year of lupus, had doted on her baby sister, family members said.

“She was a good big sister,” her aunt said, her voice cracking with emotion. “She was just a good girl.”

Pastor James Dorn Jr. of Mount Triumph Baptist Church said he had watched Ja'Nae grow up because her grandfather, Henry Hornsby, used to be the associate pastor there.

Courtesy Bhonde family

Hemant Bhonde, 65, died after a tornado struck Moore, Okla., on May 21.

Like everyone else, he remembered her as full of joy.

“She was a beautiful child to be around, someone you feel privileged to know,” he said. "She did well in school. She was just awesome."

Officials in Moore late Tuesday also identified Bhonde as a victim of the tornado.

His family members told NBC News that Bhonde became separated from his wife when the tornado hit their home. His wife survived.

Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains

Ed Zurga / EPA

A monster tornado hit Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon, leaving at least 24 dead as the threat of further storms continues.

Launch slideshow

NBC News' Jamie Novogrod contributed to this story

This story was originally published on Tue May 21, 2013 9:12 PM EDT

Just call him Python Dundee.

A Miami man pulled an 18-foot Burmese python out of roadside brush and wrestled with it for 10 minutes before cutting its head off with a knife.

The 128-pound specimen turned out to be the biggest Burmese python ever captured in Florida, besting the previous record by more than a foot, wildlife officials said.

"I was pretty exhausted and I didn't want to get bit," Jason Leon, 23, said of the decapitation that ended his struggle with the massive constrictor.

For his trouble, Leon got thanks from the the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, which considers Burmese pythons an invasive species that wreaks havoc on the state's ecosystem.

"I would think a snake of that size could kill a very large animal," said Carli Segelson, a commission spokeswoman. "It could kill a deer, so a person would be comparable in size to that."

Leon, a college student studying marine biology, said he was riding ATVs with friends in a rural area on May 11 when one of them spotted about three feet of snake sticking out of some brush.

Leon, who used to keep snakes, had never seen a python in the wild and decided to get up close and personal with this one. It wasn't until he yanked him out that he realized how big it was.

As he held it by the neck, the female wrapped around his leg once, then twice and then headed for his waist. He kept grappling with it until he became worried it might sink its razor-sharp teeth into him.

A friend handed him a nine-inch knife and he sunk it into the snake, he said.

Two days later, Leon called wildlife officials, who took the snake and confirmed it was a record-setter. He agreed to donate the skeleton but has been promised the skin, which he plans to tan and put on his living room wall.

Officials said they are grateful the python is no longer roaming the wild and that Leon was not hurt.

"Anytime people are dealing with wildlife, we recommend they use common sense," Segelson said. "If you're going to approach a Burmese python of this size, you should have an understanding of what it takes to euthanize it."

Sue Ogrocki / AP

A child is pulled from the rubble of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., and passed along to rescuers after Monday's tornado.

Seven children were found drowned at a tornado-flattened elementary school where rescuers were searching through the night for survivors as parents kept a heart-breaking vigil, officials said.

The students killed at Plaza Towers Elementary School were among at least 24 lives claimed by the monster twister that laid to Moore, Okla.

Several children and staffers were pulled alive from the ruins of Plaza Towers in Moore after the building took a direct hit Monday afternoon.

A little girl was lifted out by rescuers, while a small boy was carried to a triage area by a woman whose face was streaked with dirt and etched with worry.

Sue Ogrocki / AP

A woman carries an injured child to a triage center near the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla.,

In another image captured by an Associated Press photographer, a crowd of firefighters worked to remove a woman — her hair and clothes covered in dust and bits of debris — from the pile.

Those hopeful scenes were soon followed by devastating news as the Oklahoma City Medical Examiner's Office confirmed seven students were found dead in a pool of water.

It was unclear if any other children were killed or trapped alive.

Hysterical parents who had converged on the sprawling pile of broken concrete and twisted metal were later taken to a church to await word on the fate of their youngsters.

“Our hearts are just broken for the parents,” Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said at the briefing.

“Our prayers are with you. We are working as quickly as we can to get through the debris and answer some questions about where loved ones are.”

The funnel cloud slammed two schools — Plaza Towers and Briarwood Elementary. There were no reports of casualties from Briarwood, although the building was heavily damaged.

At Plaza Towers, the fourth, fifth and sixth grades were evacuated to a church about a quarter-mile away from the 440-student school before the tornado touched down.

Students in kindergarten through third grade sheltered in place, according to NBC station KFOR. Some of those students had been in a hallway when the twister struck, others in bathrooms.

BING / Microsoft Corp., Steve Gooch / AP

Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., before and after Monday's tornado hit.

"I had to hold on to the wall to keep myself safe because I didn't want to fly away in the tornado," one girl told the station.

James Rushing, who lives across the street, ran to the school to take shelter, thinking the building would be safer than his own home.

"About two minutes after I got there, the school started coming apart," he told The Associated Press.

The twister — deemed at least an EF4, the second-highest strength, by the National Weather Service — tore the roof off the building and knocked down its walls.

A truck that was tossed through the air landed in the spot where the school's main office would have been, KFOR reported. Books were scattered across pancaked slabs of concrete.

A crying man described to a reporter how he and others pulled a car off a teacher in the front of the building and found three children she had shielded with her body.

"Good job, teach," the man said, his voice choked with emotion.

A sixth-grade teacher told KFOR she laid on top of several children in a restroom to protect them from winds that may have topped 200 mph, and all survived.

Officials said search and rescue efforts would continue through the night.

Related:

• Monster tornado deals death, destruction in Oklahoma
• Video: Timelapse – nightmare in the suburbs
• Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains
• 'Oh my God!': KFC cook records dramatic footage of monster tornado
• What you're seeing: Videos, images from ground
• Six of the worst twisters in U.S. history
• Curse or coincidence? Scientists study Tornado Alley’s past, future
• How to help tornado victims

This story was originally published on Mon May 20, 2013 7:02 PM EDT

Sleepy Hollow High School via AP

Andrea Rebello, as seen in this image from from the 2010 Sleepy Hollow High School yearbook.

Patrol officers confronted with a hostage situation are taught to keep their distance if possible, set up a perimeter and wait for negotiators and SWAT teams to arrive.

That scenario has a high success rate: FBI data show that in the vast majority of these volatile cases, the victim is released or rescued unharmed.

Tragically, that's not how it unfolded early Friday on Long Island when, police say, a home-invasion robber holding a Hofstra University student at gunpoint came face-to-face with a cop who fired eight times, killing the suspect and his captive, 21-year-old Andrea Rebello.

The incident is still under investigation with many details unknown, but experts in police tactics say the chance for a peaceful resolution diminished the moment police crossed the threshold of the Uniondale, N.Y., home and set eyes on ex-con Dalton Smith.

Nassau County Police Department via AP

Dalton Smith, seen here in an undated police photo, was holding Andrea Rebello hostage when police confronted him and shot him and her dead.

"Once they're confronting a suspect with a gun, they have two options: back out and call SWAT or engage in negotiation or deadly force with the suspect," said Stuart Meyers of the police-training firm OpTac. "You can't really second-guess their decision."

A key question will be why they decided to go inside the house.

At a press conference over the weekend, Nassau County police said the two officers who first arrived on the scene had no idea a hostage was involved.

They were dispatched after one of the home's residents, sent out by the robber to get money from a cash machine, dialed 911.

When they arrived, Smith allegedly ordered Andrea's twin, Jessica, to answer the door and say everything was fine. Instead, she ran from the home, screaming, "He's got a gun."

When the officers entered they found Smith, along with Andrea and a male student. The male managed to get away, but the gunman kept the young woman in a headlock, training his gun on her as he tried to back out a rear door.

"When he realizes there is a police officer behind a wall in the hallway, he now moves her even closer to the front of his body," police Lt. John Azzata told reporters.

Then Smith pointed his gun at one of the officers, who fired eight rounds, Azzata said.

One shot hit Rebello in the head, killing her. Her godfather, Henry Santos, told the Associated Press the news she was struck down by a police bullet was a "second shock" for the grieving family.

David Klinger, a former officer and expert on police-involved shootings, said investigators will want to find out exactly what the officer who pulled the trigger knew before entering.

If he believed the only person inside was the gunman, there may have been no reason to go in without heavy backup, he said. If he suspected someone was being held at gunpoint, waiting for negotiators might have been more prudent.

But, Klinger noted, if he knew both the suspect and victims were in the house but was unsure of what was happening, going through the door could have been the right move.

"Let's say there's an armed robber in the house and a woman hiding in the closet ... if I can get in there and help this woman, then I do it," said Klinger, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

In this case, it's unclear if the 911 caller, the dispatcher, the officers themselves or a combination of all three added to the confusion.

Experts agreed that once the cops were inside and saw there was a hostage, their options were severely limited.

Despite the terrible outcome, the officer who fired — who has 20 years of law-enforcement experience — broke no laws in using deadly force and may not have violated police guidelines.

"When a gun is pointed at your face, second-guessing goes out the window," said Charles Key, former head of firearms training for the Baltimore Police Department and a consultant in police-involved shootings.

"Officers are trained to fire as many shots as necessary," Key said. "And you can fire eight rounds in less than two seconds."

Unlike tactical units who fire 50,000 practice rounds a year, a patrol officer usually has firearms training just twice a year, he said. In Uniondale, cops with the extra training were on their way but didn't get there before Rebello and Smith were dead.

The officer who shot Rebello is on sick leave. Law-enforcement trainers said it's impossible to predict if he will return to active duty. Even cops who kill criminals are sometimes too shaken to think about firing their gun again.

As police and prosecutors try to determine what missteps -- if any -- were made, no one will be trying harder to find answers than the cop who fired the eight shots, Key said

"This officer is going to second-guess himself until it eats him alive," he said.

Courtesy Jeff Taylor

Lebanon High School senior Jeff Taylor, 18, with the water gun he uses to play "Assassin," a game that has been banned at New York City's Hunter College High School and others across the country.

An elite New York City high school is warning seniors it could ban them from prom or graduation — or even snitch to college admission officers — if they're caught playing a popular toy-gun game in or near the school building.

The game is called "Assassin" or "Killer," and it's played at schools across the country, usually in May after exams end. Rules vary, but it generally involves students stalking and shooting human targets with water pistols, Nerf darts or plastic disks until only one remains.

Players say it's a fun way to blow off steam, but some school administrators and police officials fear it could turn deadly serious.

"Parents and students should know that we consider this a dangerous game and prohibit playing it on campus," Hunter College High School Principal Tony Fisher wrote in an email to parents last week.

"You should be aware that any students found playing the game within the school or in the immediate vicinity of the building will receive disciplinary consequences."

Fisher declined comment to NBC News but his email details the potential penalties: banning a player from senior events, suspending them, or reporting the incident to colleges if it's not their first serious transgression.

"At least one Senior has been excluded from Prom as a consequence of getting caught playing Killer for each of the last five years,” Fisher wrote.

His concern, echoed by other administrators who have cracked down on the game in recent years, is that the popular diversion is riskier than it seems on the surface.

A student being pursued by an "assassin" could dart into traffic, or a water pistol could be mistaken for a real gun. Teens could be tempted to break laws while they hunt their prey.

Police in Stoughton, Mass., said the dangers aren't purely hypothetical.

"Some of them really do take it too far," said Deputy Chief Robert Devine, recalling a scary incident two years ago.

"It was six in the morning and this kid was proned out [laying on the ground], wearing camouflage, behind a fence, waiting for his target to walk by. A neighbor saw it and the water gun looked like a real firearm and before you knew it, this kid had two officers pointing firearms at him," Devine said.

"And it wasn't the first time we've had calls like that," said Devine, who worked with the local high school to discourage kids from playing the game.

A game in West Jefferson, Pa., was squelched this year after police got reports of teens in high-speed, reckless chases, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. A Hillsborough, N.J., school was locked down in 2011 after a report of someone pointing a gun out a car window; it was later determined to be a player with a water pistol, the Hillsborough Patch reported.

The NYPD told Hunter that the students' annual "Killer" session overlaps with a gang-initiation period in the city, and that gang members could paint their real guns to look like toys — creating a confusing, dangerous situation for police, Fisher's email said.

At Lebanon High School in New Hampshire, a round of "Senior Assassin" is in its third week after starting with scores of players.

Senior Jeff Taylor, 18, who made it to the semifinals, said he doesn't see anything wrong with it.

"I just have fun doing it," he said. "It's a friendly rivalry and I'm a competitive person."

He said no one could mistake his water weapon for a real gun: "I'm using a super soaker. It's bright orange, blue and green."

Nikayla Cartier, 18, who also attends Lebanon High, said she can "totally understand" why some grown-ups are aghast, "but in all honesty, there's never really been a serious problem."

Cartier, who was eliminated on the first day when someone ambushed her at home, admitted some classmates go overboard. One staked out a spot on a friend's roof like a sniper, waiting for his target to walk by.

"It's extremely stressful because you're watching your back 24-7," she said. "But it’s a good kind of stressful."

The label on the bottle said it contained a common antibiotic, but prosecutors say inside was a drug that's often used to induce abortions.

Remee Jo Lee, 26, was six weeks pregnant when her boyfriend gave her a pill he said was prescribed by his father, a Florida fertility doctor, to treat a bacterial infection, according to court papers.

Lee says she trustingly swallowed the pill, and within hours started bleeding. She went to the hospital, where she had a miscarriage and learned that her boyfriend had tricked her into terminating her pregnancy, her lawyer alleges.

Now the ex-boyfriend, John Andrew Welden, 28, is in county lockup, facing a civil lawsuit and a murder rap.

A federal indictment unsealed Thursday charged Welden with product-tampering and first-degree murder under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, charges that could carry a life sentence. 

Courtesy of Gil Sanchez

Remee Jo Lee says her boyfriend tricked her into taking an abortion pill and she miscarried at six weeks.

The lawyer who represented him at an initial appearance Wednesday did not return a phone call but said in court that the allegations were out of character for his client, according to The Associated Press.

In a civil complaint and statement, Lee's attorney described how an eight-month romance turned toxic when his client became pregnant in February.

Lee "was anticipating motherhood with great joy and excitement," but Welden begged her not to go through with it, lawyer Gil Sanchez said in a press release. 

"Everyone dreams of becoming a mom. This was my chance," Lee told told Tampa's WFTS-TV.

In late March, Welden took Lee to his father's Lutz, Fla., clinic for a prenatal examination, including a sonogram and blood and urine samples that confirmed a healthy pregnancy, Lee's lawsuit says.

The next day, Welden told Lee that his father had diagnosed her with an infection and prescribed Amoxicillin, the antibiotic, the suit charges.

In reality, the doctor's son had forged a prescription for Cytotec, an ulcer drug that can be used for non-surgical abortions because it causes contractions, Lee's lawyer said.

"He came to my house with the pills, his weapon of choice," Lee told WFTS.

"He told me to keep taking them. I was supposed to take three a day for days."

Welden later admitted to Lee that he had fooled her, the suit claims. It describes his actions as "outrageous, beyond the bounds of decency and utterly intolerable."

The suit seeks unspecified damages in excess of $15,000.

"We may soon be seeking redress for Lee against others who may have some degree of liability for this heinous act," Sanchez said, without identifying anyone.

Welden, who worked at his father's clinic but was not a doctor, is the only person charged with a crime. Workers at the clinic declined to comment.

AP file photo

Anglers in this year's Winni Derby on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire will have to pass a lie-detector test before claiming any prizes.

There will be no fish stories at this year's Winni Derby in New Hampshire.

Organizers of the annual landlocked salmon-fishing contest will force the winner to take a polygraph exam to ensure the grand-prize specimen isn't imported from another lake or caught earlier.

"It's something that's always been in our rules, but it was never done before," derby chair Diane LaBrie said Thursday, the eve of the three-day competition.

She said no one has been caught cheating, but "there's a lot of rumors."

"People talk. Fish and Game hears things. We just feel it's necessary to do."

The derby costs $40 to enter and the grand prize is $12,500. The rules say that the salmon and lake trout must be caught on Lake Winnipesaukee in central New Hampshire.

LaBrie said over-eager anglers could be tempted to take their boats out on smaller lakes that might have bigger salmon because they're less fished and then bring them to the derby weigh station.

It's even possible someone could land a big fish before the derby and then keep it alive until the weigh-in.

So to make sure the scales of justice are not compromised, this year's winner will have to submit to a lie-detector exam within a week, as first reported by the New Hampshire Union Leader. If they flunk, the title will be stripped.

Last year's top winner weighed 5.4 pounds and was almost 25 inches long.

Jurors who convicted Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell of first-degree murder said Wednesday it was wrenching to sift through the gruesome evidence that he delivered three babies alive and then killed them.

“It was business as usual for him,” juror David Misko told reporters outside the courthouse where Gosnell was sentenced to a third life term as part of a deal that allowed him to avoid the death penalty.

The panel deliberated 10 days before finding Gosnell guilty of three counts of first-degree murder for snipping three babies’ spinal cords after botched late-term abortions, along with more than 200 lesser charges.

The three jurors who spoke Wednesday said photos of the babies were the most compelling, and sickening, evidence.

Juror Sarah Glinski said that because she does not have children, she was able to emotionally detach to some degree, but the photos forced her “to admit that this kind of evil exists in this world.

”Misko said it was also difficult to look at Gosnell, 72, in the courtroom.

“He just sat there for the past eight weeks, smirking,” he said.

Two of the jurors said they believed Gosnell had opened his clinic in the poor West Philadelphia neighborhood intending to help young women in dire straits, as the defense contended.

“I think somewhere, something went wrong perhaps in his mind that made him do these things to these children that were born alive,” said Glinksi.

Juror Joseph Carroll said he believed that over the years the clinic became an assembly-line operation.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his lawyer, John McMahon, before Judge Jeffrey Minehart, in Philadelphia, on May 15.

“He started out as a good practice doctor but eventually just became a money-generating machine,” Carroll said.

Carroll feels Gosnell wasn’t the only one to blame, saying women who had gone to the clinic knowing they were more than 24 weeks pregnant should have been charged, too.

“I really believed that they didn’t care,” he said. “They didn’t want a child and they found a service that was going to rectify that situation.

"Gosnell could have faced the death penalty for the babies’ deaths, but in a last-minute deal with prosecutors, he agreed to waive his right to appeal in exchange for life without parole on two of the first-degree murder counts.

On Wednesday, he was sentenced to a third life term for the third baby’s death, as well as the death of a 41-year-old patient who overdosed on anesthesia and dozens of other lesser charges.

His defense lawyer said he was convicted in the public’s mind before trial because of a grand jury report that described the clinic as a “house of horrors” splattered with blood, staffed by unlicensed workers and filled with broken-down equipment.

McMahon said Gosnell cut a deal with prosecutors to avoid putting his six children through a death penalty phase, not because he believes he committed a crime.

"Dr. Gosnell truly believes in himself and things he's done but at this point, the jury has spoken ... He's resigned and accepted his fate,” McMahon said.

McMahon said Gosnell knows he “bent the rules” by performing abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy, which is prohibited under Pennsylvania law, and admits to other mistakes.

“He recognizes he did things wrong," he said.

But his client, he said, is not a murderer."He believes what he did was not homicide. He believes he never killed a live baby," McMahon said.

"Dr. Gosnell is far from a monster and this was not a house of horrors."Gosnell still faces a federal trial in September on allegations he wrote fraudulent prescriptions for pain pills. McMahon said he "probably" will make a deal on those charges.

The U.S. diplomat accused of spying in Russia joins a small group of Americans who have been publicly branded spies while overseas.

Keystone/Getty Images

Francis Gary Powers, pilot of the U-2 spy plane which crashed in Russia, appears before a Senate Armed Forces Committee in Washington holding a model of a U-2 in March 1962.

Their alleged transgressions range from piloting a spy plane into enemy territory to darting over a border in the wilderness. Some of them were returned to the U.S. after diplomatic intervention; some are still waiting to learn their ultimate fate:

Francis Gary Powers: The U-2 pilot parachuted into history on May 1, 1960, when a Russian missile shot down his spy plane. The cover story was that it was a weather plane, but after months of interrogation by the KGB, Powers publicly confessed to espionage and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

He served less than two years, though, after the U.S. and Russia agreed to a spy swap. When he returned to the States, he found himself under fire for failing to activate the self-destruct mechanism on the U-2 or use a cyanide capsule before his capture, according to his son's website.

Cleared of any wrongdoing during a congressional inquiry, he was later awarded several medals -- but not until 20 years after he was killed in a helicopter accident while working as a pilot for KNBC in Los Angeles.

Vincent Kessler/Reuters

American businessman Edmond Pope, accompained by his wife Cheri, gives a thumbs-up to the press assembled on a balcony at the American Hospital of Landstuhl in Germany after he flew in from Moscow on Dec. 14, 2000.

Edmond Pope: It took 40 years after the Powers case for another American to be convicted of spying in Russia. Pope was a U.S. businessman working on defense projects when he was accused of obtaining classified torpedo designs from a Moscow professor. Pope said he had no idea the plans were off-limits.

His 2000 trial — which featured his defense lawyer delivering a closing argument in verse — ended with a guilty verdict and 20-year sentence. Within days, President Vladimir Putin had pardoned him, citing his poor health.

The retired naval intelligence officer always denied being a spy. "I'm not James Bond," he insisted after his release.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee: The two journalists traveled to China in 2009 to film a documentary for Current TV and were arrested after North Korea claimed they had crossed the border. With tensions between Washington and Pyongyang running high, the two women were convicted of "hostilities" against North Korea and illegal entry and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.

Ling and Lee were granted amnesty after former President Bill Clinton intervened on behalf of the White House. They later said that they had spent only seconds on the North Korean side of the border before returning to Chinese territory and that soldiers chased them and dragged them back.

Robyn Beck/AFP – Getty Images

Freed U.S. journalists Euna Lee, left, and Laura Ling embrace family members after being released from North Korea at the airport in Burbank, Calif., on Aug. 5, 2009.

Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd: A visit by three hikers to a waterfall on the border of Iran and Iraq turned into a two-year international saga. Iranian guards arrested the trio — who were working in Kurdistan at the time — and accused them of espionage.

Shourd was released in 2010 for health reasons but the two men were convicted in 2011 and sentenced to eight years. They became a cause celebre and were released a month later after the government of Oman posted nearly $1 million in bail to secure their freedom.

They maintain that they were not spying and don't even know if they actually crossed into Iran by accident. "From the very start, the only reason we have been held hostage is because we are American," Fattal said when he and Bauer were back on U.S. soil.

Press TV via AP

American hikers Shane Bauer, left, Sarah Shourd, center, and Josh Fattal, sit at the Esteghlal Hotel in Tehran, Iran, on May 20, 2010.

Timothy Tracy: Venezuelan authorities arrested the California filmmaker last month and accused him of being a U.S. government agent and paying right-wing groups to destabilize the new government of leftist President Nicolas Maduro.

The 35-year-old's family said he was in Venezuela only to make a documentary. He was heading back to the U.S. for his father's 80th birthday when he was detained at the airport in Caracas, relatives told the Associated Press.

Obama called the accusations that Tracy is a spy and that the U.S. is trying to incite civil war "ridiculous."

Tracy family via AP

This undated family photo released April 25, 2013, shows Timothy Tracy inside of a vehicle in Venezuela.

Kenneth Bae: The American businessman was arrested in North Korea in November and sentenced last month to 15 years of hard labor for "hostile acts."

Yonhap via Reuters

Video released in Seoul by Yonhap News Agency on May 2, 2013, shows a portrait of U.S. citizen Kenneth Bae.

Friends say Bae, 44,  was a tour operator who ran excursions from China and a devout Christian who had traveled to the North several times with an eye toward helping orphans there.

The U.S. has demanded his release, and basketball star Dennis Rodman, who claims to be friends with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, tweeted that he was going to bat for Bae.

Alan Gross: The U.S. Agency for International Development subcontractor is serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba after being convicted of leading a "subversive project" by smuggling satellite equipment to the communist-run island.

James L. Berenthal/AP

Jailed American Alan Gross poses for a photo during a visit by Rabbi Elie Abadie and U.S. lawyer James L. Berenthal at Finlay military hospital in Havana, Cuba, on Nov. 27, 2012.

He was nabbed during his fifth trip to Cuba in 2009 while in possession of a SIM card that blocks tracking of satellite phone signals. It is not available on the open market, according to the AP, but is used by the Defense Department, State Department and CIA.

Gross, 64, claimed during that trial that he was doing humanitarian work and was duped into bringing in contraband. His lawyer has called him a pawn in the decades-old feud between the U.S. and Cuba.