Dwight J. Loving

Dwight Jeffrey Loving (born c. 1968) was one of six military personnel on death row until President Barack Obama commuted his sentence to life without parole on January 17, 2017. Loving, a private in the United States Army, was sentenced to death following his conviction for murdering two soldiers, working as part-time taxi drivers on December 24, 1988. He was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas at the time of the murders. Loving said he killed his first victim to see if he could get away with it and killed his second one for fun.

On January 17, 2017, three days before leaving office, President Obama commuted Loving's death sentence to life imprisonment without parole, "on the condition that Loving shall never have any rights, privileges, claims or benefits arising under the parole and suspension or remission of sentence laws of the United States and the regulations promulgated thereunder governing federal prisoners confined in any penal institution."

He lost a subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court in 2001. The lack of executions in the intervening decades was due to a Supreme Court decision in 1969 had held that the military did not have jurisdiction over crimes committed off-post by military personnel. The Supreme Court's reversal of that decision in 1987 made the possibility of military death sentences more likely.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of his death sentence on June 3, 1996, in a decision by Justice Anthony Kennedy. Loving's attorneys had contended that the doctrine of separation of powers allowed only Congress rather than the President to define the "aggravating factors" that weighed in his sentencing.

As they had in 1996, attorneys from the Cornell University Law School's Death Penalty Project were seeking further Supreme Court review of his case in November 2009, following his failure to persuade the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces that he had lacked adequate representation during the sentencing phase of his trial.

He was convicted at a court martial held at Ft. Hood in March 1989. He was found guilty on April 3, 1989. He made several attempts to have his sentence invalidated.

Dwight Jeffrey Loving was a native of Rochester, New York, born c. 1968. He was an Army Private First Class stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. On the night of December 11, 1988, he committed two armed robberies of convenience stores, netting less than $100. He then decided to rob some cab drivers. On December 24, during the course of those robberies, Loving murdered two taxicab drivers and attempted to murder a third.