Manuel Martinez Coronado was a farmer and mass murderer from Guatemala, executed on February 10, 1998 for the May 1995 murders of seven people.

Murders

Coronado murdered seven members of the same family in an incident that occurred on May 17, 1995. However, Amnesty International would later claim that evidence also said that his stepfather may have been the real killer.

Arrest

Coronado was arrested and charged with multiple homicide. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Despite pleas from Amnesty International to overturn the verdict, Guatemalan authorities claimed that he would be executed on February 10, 1998.

Execution

Coronado was executed by lethal injection in Guatemala City on February 10, 1998. His execution was broadcast live on television. Doctors in surgical gowns and masks carried out the execution. After the poison was administered, it took eighteen minutes for him to die. His wife and children were heard sobbing in the background throughout the execution. The doctors then examined the body to confirm his death. He was the first Guatemalan executed by lethal injection. The Guatemalan government had recently made lethal injection legal. At least three more Guatemalans have since been executed by this method.

Criticism

Amnesty International, which had protested his death sentence, complained that doctors carrying out the execution was a "breach of medical ethics" and that Guatemalan authorities refused to release the identities of the healthcare workers who carried out the execution.

Wikipedia.org