AUGUST 24, 2024:
PENNSYLVANIA—-female to face death penalty
DA seeks death penalty against San Diego woman accused in Shadyside newborn’s death
The Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office will seek the death penalty against a California woman accused of killing her friend’s newborn son, marking a rare occasion in which the DA’s office has sought capital punishment against a woman.
Nicole Elizabeth Virzi, 30, is charged with homicide in the June 15 death of 6-week-old Leon Katz.
The San Diego woman was babysitting Leon while his parents took the newborn’s twin brother to the hospital for injuries police allege Ms. Virzi caused. She faces multiple counts of aggravated assault and child endangerment.
Ms. Virzi waived her preliminary hearing last month, and she was formally arraigned on the charges against her Friday. She was not in court for the arraignment. Several supporters of the Katz family were present.
The DA’s office this week filed notice that prosecutors will seek the death penalty. To do so, the office must cite so-called aggravating factors — circ*mstances that make the crime severe or heinous enough to warrant capital punishment.
Pennsylvania law includes 18 aggravating factors that prosecutors can cite in their pursuit of the death penalty. They range from the victim being a law enforcement officer or a judge to the crime involving kidnapping or torture.
In the case of Ms. Virzi, the DA’s office cited 4: the defendant committed the killing while in the perpetration of a felony; the offense was committed by means of torture; the victim was under 12 years old; and the defendant has a significant history of felony convictions involving the use or threat of violence.
Although Ms. Virzi does not have a criminal history, if a jury finds her guilty of the charges against her in this case, those convictions will count as a criminal history for the purpose of sentencing.
Ms. Virzi’s attorney, David Shrager, said last month that his client is a longtime friend of the infants’ parents and she was “absolutely devastated” by Leon’s death.
“If there was something that she would want to convey, it would just be the absolutely horrible pain that she’s feeling,” Mr. Shrager said after Ms. Virzi waived her July 24 preliminary hearing. “These were her close friends.”
There are currently no women on death row in Pennsylvania.
In 2016, the DA sought the death penalty against a McKeesport woman who police say recorded video images as she smothered her 1-year-old son and sent them to the boy’s father.
Christian Clark, 21, was spared the death penalty after she agreed to a plea deal and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2019.
In 2014, the state Supreme Court ordered Michelle Tharp, sentenced to death in Washington County in 2000, receive a new sentencing hearing. That case remains pending, court records show. In 2016, a Clinton County judge resentenced Shonda Walter to life in prison based on “totally incompetent counsel,” according to the Associated Press.
According to the criminal complaint filed June 16, Ms. Virzi was watching over the infant at the family’s Walnut Street apartment in Shadyside, though Ms. Virzi herself had been staying at an Airbnb about a mile away in Bloomfield. The San Diego Tribune reported she is a doctoral candidate at San Diego State University and UC San Diego.
Ms. Virzi called 911 around 11:15 p.m. June 15 to report that Leon had fallen from a bassinet, bumped his head, and was becoming unresponsive. Leon was taken to Children’s Hospital and pronounced dead the next morning. The medical examiner’s office said the child had suffered a severe skull fracture and multiple brain bleeds, according to the complaint.
Police said Ms. Virzi had no “plausible explanation” for the severity of Leon’s injuries. She told them he’d been acting normally and was sitting in his bouncer seat when she fell asleep for a time, according to the complaint. She awoke and went to the kitchen to get a bottle, she said, when she heard the baby screaming.
She said she found Leon lying on his left side on the floor with a large bump on his head. Detectives wrote in the complaint that it is about 18 inches from the tallest point of the bouncer seat to the floor.
Doctors told investigators the injured twin, Ari, had small scratches on both sides of his face, 2 bruises below his belly button and swelling, bruising, redness and scratches to his genitals, according to the complaint. Medical professionals said the injuries to both boys were unnatural and indicative of abuse.
Ms. Virzi told police she was the one who spotted the injuries to the other twin and alerted the parents. She said infant scratched his own face when he flailed as she was putting him in his car seat, according to the complaint. She was the only one watching over Leon once his parents left to take his brother to the hospital.
Pennsylvania has executed only three people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978 and none since 1999. Former Gov. Tom Wolf in 2015 declared a moratorium on executions, and Gov. Josh Shapiro has pledged not to sign any death warrants during his tenure. Capital crimes continue to be prosecuted and death sentences issued.
Since the 1900s, the state has only ever executed 2 women: Irene Schroeder in 1931 and Corrine Sykes in 1946, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-partisan nonprofit that collects data on capital punishment in the United States.
There are around 100 inmates on Pennsylvania’s death row, 6 of whom were prosecuted and sentenced in Allegheny County.
(source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
SOUTH CAROLINA—-new and impending execution date
South Carolina sets date for 1st execution in more than 13 years
South Carolina has set a Sept. 20 date to put inmate Freddie Eugene Owens to death in what would be the state’s 1st execution in more than 13 years.
South Carolina was once one of the busiest states for executions, but for years had had trouble obtaining lethal injection drugs due to pharmaceutical companies’ concerns that they would have to disclose that they had sold the drugs to officials.
The state Legislature has since passed a law allowing officials to keep lethal injection drug suppliers secret and, in July, the state Supreme Court cleared the way to restart executions.
Owens, who killed a store clerk in Greenville in 1997, will likely have the choice to die by lethal injection, electrocution or by the newly added option of a firing squad. A Utah inmate in 2010 was the last person to have been executed by a firing squad in the U.S., according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
The prisons director has 5 days to confirm that all 3 execution methods will be available. He must also give Owens’ lawyers proof that the lethal injection drug is stable and correctly mixed, according to the high court’s 2023 interpretation of the state’s secrecy law on executions that helped reopen the door to South Carolina’s death chamber.
A lawyer for Owens didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Owens, 46, will then have about a week to let the state know how he wishes to be killed. If he makes no choice, the state will send him to the electric chair by default.
The justices didn’t specify how much information has to be released but they have promised a swift ruling if an inmate challenged the details in the disclosure.
South Carolina used to use a mix of 3 drugs, but now will use 1 drug, the sedative pentobarbital, for lethal injections in a protocol similar to executions carried out by the federal government.
Owens can ask Republican Gov. Henry McMaster for mercy and to reduce his sentence to life without parole. No South Carolina governor has ever granted clemency in the modern era of the death penalty.
South Carolina’s last execution was in May 2011. The state didn’t set out to pause executions, but its supply of lethal injection drugs expired and companies refused to sell the state more if the transaction was made public.
It took a decade of wrangling in the Legislature — first adding the firing squad as a method and later passing a shield law — to get capital punishment restarted.
South Carolina has put 43 inmates to death since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976. In the early 2000s, it was carrying out an average of 3 executions a year. Only nine states have put more inmates to death.
But since the unintentional execution pause, South Carolina’s death row population has dwindled. The state had 63 condemned inmates in early 2011. It currently has 32. About 20 inmates have been taken off death row and received different prison sentences after successful appeals. Others have died of natural causes.
Along with Owens, at least 3 other inmates have exhausted their regular appeals and a few more are close, meaning the death chamber could be busy to close out 2024.
The recent state Supreme Court ruling that reopened the door for executions found that the state shield law was legal and both the electric chair and firing squad were not cruel punishments.
The South Carolina General Assembly authorized the state to create a firing squad in 2021 to give inmates a choice between it and the same electric chair the state bought in 1912.
Supporters of the firing squad, including some Democrats reluctant about the death penalty, said it appears to be the quickest and most painless way to kill an inmate.
Owens killed store clerk Irene Graves during a string of robberies in 1997. He has been sentenced to death 3 separate times during his appeals.
After being convicted of murder his initial trial in 1999 but before a jury determined his sentence, Owens killed his cellmate at the Greenville County jail.
Owens gave investigators a detailed account of how he killed his cellmate, stabbing and burning his eyes, choking him and stomping him while another prisoner was in the cell and stayed quietly in his bunk, according to trial testimony.
(source: Associated Press)
SC schedules Greenville Co. inmate to be 1st execution in 13 years
The 1st inmate to be executed in 13 years in South Carolina will be Greenville County’s Freddie Owens, convicted in 1999 of killing a convenience store clerk and, days after the verdict, his cellmate.
Owens’ execution date will be Sept. 20, the South Carolina Department of Corrections announced in a late August 23 news release.
The state Supreme Court sent the execution notice to the state’s prisons director earlier in the day, giving him 4 Fridays by law to execute Owens.
Owens will be asked to choose how he wants to be executed 2 weeks before execution day. After a recent state Supreme Court ruling, he can choose between lethal injection, the electric chair or a firing squad.
Owens, 46, was convicted of murder for fatally shooting Irene Graves, a convenience store clerk, on Nov. 1, 1997, while robbing the store with an accomplice during a Halloween night spree.
At his trial, Owens maintained he was at home when the robbery and shooting happened, counter to witness statements.
Post verdict, Owens killed his Greenville County jail cellmate Christopher Lee. Before being transferred from the jail to state prison, Lee taunted Owens by saying he would be joining him in prison soon because of his murder conviction, Owens confessed after the murder.
He was resentenced twice, the last of which took place in September 2006, after the Supreme Court reversed his 2 initial death sentences.
He was first scheduled for execution in 2021. He has had an ongoing lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of South Carolina challenging the constitutionality of execution by electrocution and firing squad under the federal Constitution.
However, because there is no stay of execution ordered by the federal court, Owens can be issued a death warrant.
5 other men on death row have exhausted all of their appeals and are likely to be scheduled for execution soon.
As of August 23, there are 32 inmates on death row in South Carolina. At least 18 death row inmates have been resentenced for a myriad of reasons since the last execution in 2011, ranging from an aggressive prosecutor to successful appeals.
(source: postandcourier.com)
FLORIDA—-impending execution
Florida Supreme Court Rejects Death Row Inmate’s Appeal, Execution Likely To Proceed
The Florida Supreme Court has unanimously denied an appeal by Loran Cole, a death row inmate convicted of murdering a Florida State University student in 1994.
This decision paves the way for his scheduled execution next week, though last-minute federal court appeals are anticipated.
Cole’s attorneys had argued that abuse he suffered as a teenager at the notorious Dozier School for Boys contributed to his criminal behavior. They also cited a recent law offering compensation to Dozier victims as new evidence warranting a review of his death sentence.
However, the court rejected these arguments, stating that the law doesn’t constitute new evidence and Cole’s claims about Dozier were raised too late.
The court also dismissed concerns about Cole’s Parkinson’s disease causing complications during lethal injection, stating that his claims were meritless and filed too late.
Cole’s execution is scheduled for next Thursday. Death penalty opponents argue that the trauma Cole experienced at Dozier should be reconsidered, while the court’s decision brings the state one step closer to carrying out the execution.
(source: tampafp.com)
Florida Supreme Court refuses to block execution of FSU student’s killer—-Loran Cole faces execution after Florida Supreme Court rejects appeal
The Florida Supreme Court on Friday unanimously rejected an appeal by a death row inmate convicted of killing a Florida State University student 3 decades ago in the Ocala National Forest, likely setting in motion last-minute federal court appeals before a scheduled execution next week.
Attorneys for Loran Cole launched state court appeals after Gov. Ron DeSantis in late July signed a death warrant that would lead to Cole’s execution Thursday at Florida State Prison.
The Supreme Court decision rejected a series of arguments, including claims related to abuse Cole suffered as a teenager at the state’s notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna.
Cole’s attorneys contended the abuse at the now-shuttered reform school contributed to his behavior. They also pointed to a recently passed law that set up a compensation program for people who were abused at the Jackson County school and the Okeechobee School in South Florida, saying the law constituted “newly discovered evidence” that warranted a fresh look at Cole’s death sentence.
The law, approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis, set aside $20 million for people who attended the schools between 1940 and 1975. Cole, who was 17 when he was sent to Dozier in 1984, would not be eligible for the compensation.
The Supreme Court, upholding an Aug. 8 decision by Marion County Circuit Judge Robert Hodges, said the new law “does not amount to newly discovered evidence” that would require another review.
“Indeed, we have routinely held that resolutions, consensus opinions, articles, research, and the like do not satisfy the standard,” said the opinion shared by Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz and Justices Charles Canady, John Couriel, Renatha Francis Jamie Grosshans, Jorge Labarga and Meredith Sasso.
Cole’s lawyers for years have argued that his 6-month stint at Dozier played a role in the behavior that led to the 1994 murder of Florida State student John Edwards, who was on a camping trip in the Ocala National Forest.
But the 2024 law added a new twist to the legal pleadings, with Cole’s lawyers arguing the compensation program showed that the state admitted it was “complicit” in the mistreatment of students at the reform schools.
Cole said he was raped by a guard, beaten at least twice a week and had both of his legs broken after trying to escape during his 6-month stint at Dozier, court documents dating back more than a decade said.
“That horrible place helped create the Loran Cole who sits on death row today,” his lawyers argued in an appeal filed at the Supreme Court in 2011.
But Friday’s ruling said that Cole’s claims about the school were not new and were procedurally barred from being raised years after a court deadline for such arguments.
“The state of Florida’s decision to now compensate some of those individuals who attended the school does not revive Cole’s previously denied postconviction claims,” the opinion said.
Court filings contended Cole suppressed memories of his experiences at Dozier, with the memories resurfacing after he watched a documentary in 2009 about abuse at the school.
But Friday’s ruling disputed the suppressed memories argument, pointing to Hodges’ ruling, which found that the Dozier issue was raised in an “investigation report” before a jury’s unanimous death sentence recommendation in 1995.
Death penalty opponents, however, have said Cole’s trauma at Dozier deserves another look.
“It’s concerning that the state has recognized, through recent legislation, the horrors of what occurred at Dozier but, at the same time, seeks to proceed with executing Cole without allowing him an opportunity to litigate his claims based on the abuse he endured at Dozier. The court’s ruling today gets the state one step closer to being able to complete Cole’s execution,” Melanie Kalmanson, an attorney and author of the “Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty” blog, told the News Service of Florida on Friday.
Justices also rejected arguments related to Cole’s symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, which his lawyers said could lead to “needless pain and suffering” during the triple-drug lethal injection process.
“Cole’s Parkinson’s symptoms will make it impossible for Florida to safely and humanely carry out his execution because his involuntary body movements will affect the placement of the intravenous lines necessary to carry out an execution by lethal injection,” a brief filed by Cole’s lawyers said.
But the Supreme Court ruling said Cole, 57, who has suffered from Parkinson’s since at least 2017, “failed to raise any argument related to the method of execution until after the governor signed a death warrant” on July 29.
“Regardless, Cole’s claim is meritless,” the decision said.
Florida’s lethal injection protocol requires the intravenous administration of 3 drugs: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart from beating.
Cole’s appeal did not meet the threshold requirements of establishing “that the method of execution presents a substantial and imminent risk that is sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering,” the Supreme Court ruling said.
“We have already rejected challenges to the … protocol based upon the possibility of involuntary movements,” the ruling said. “And we have repeatedly recognized that the Department of Corrections is entitled to the presumption that it will comply with the lethal injection protocol. … That protocol includes safeguards to ensure the condemned is unconscious throughout the execution.”
Cole was sentenced to death in the February 1994 murder of Edwards, who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister, a student at Eckerd College, court records show.
Cole and another man, William Paul, joined the brother and sister at their campsite. After they decided to walk to a pond, Cole knocked Edwards’ sister to the ground and ultimately handcuffed her, the records said. Paul took the sister up a trail, and John Edwards died from a slashed throat and blows to the head that fractured his skull, according to the court records. Edwards’ sister was sexually assaulted and was tied to two trees the next morning before freeing herself. (In most cases, The News Service of Florida does not identify sexual assault victims by name.)
(source: WCJB news)
MISSOURI—-impending execution
Missouri Supreme Court blocks agreement that would have halted execution
The Missouri Supreme Court blocked an agreement that would spare the life of a man on death row. Instead, Marcellus Williams must now proceed with a hearing on his innocence claim, with a little over a month to go before his scheduled execution.
The ruling late Wednesday came hours after St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hilton approved a plan allowing Williams to enter a new no-contest plea to 1st-degree murder in the 1998 death of Lisha Gayle. Though Williams’ lawyers said he still maintains he is innocent, the plea would acknowledge evidence was sufficient for a conviction.
Williams, 55, would have been sentenced to life in prison without parole on Thursday. Instead the Sept. 24 execution date is still on, pending a hearing before Hilton on Williams’ innocence claim.
Here’s what there is to know about the case:
The killing
Lisha Gayle was a social worker and a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. She was stabbed to death inside her home in University City on Aug. 11, 1998.
At the time, prosecutors said Williams broke into Gayle’s home and heard water running in the shower upstairs. They said he found a large butcher knife and waited for her to come down. When she did, Gayle was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.
Authorities said Williams also stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt, and his girlfriend asked him why he was wearing it on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the car and that Williams sold it a day or two later.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a St. Louis cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and offered details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole, who were both convicted of felonies, wanted a $10,000 reward for information in the case.
Williams was found guilty in 2001 and sentenced to death, and the conviction was later upheld by the Missouri Supreme Court.
DNA evidence emerges
In 2017, Williams was hours away from execution — he’d already eaten his last meal. His lawyers made one final appeal citing DNA testing unavailable at the time of the original trial indicating that the DNA of someone other than Williams was found on the knife.
It was enough to persuade then-Gov. Eric Greitens to grant a stay of execution and appoint a board of inquiry made up of former judges.
But that board never issued a report or released findings. In 2023, Gov. Mike Parson — like Greitens, a Republican — dissolved the inquiry board. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled in June that Parson had the right to do so, and set the Sept. 24 execution date.
Prosecutor challenges the murder conviction
When Williams was convicted, St. Louis County’s prosecutor was Bob McCulloch, a tough-on-crime prosecutor who served 28 years before he was upset by Ferguson City Council member Wesley Bell in the 2018 Democratic primary. Bell, who made his name in Ferguson after Michael Brown’s death, pledged a more progressive approach to running the office.
That included taking a new look at potential wrongful convictions. In January, Bell announced that he would seek a hearing before a judge to vacate Williams’ murder conviction, citing the DNA testing. That hearing was set for Wednesday before Judge Hilton.
New DNA test results, released on Monday, changed everything.
They determined that the knife used in the killing was mishandled in the aftermath of the crime. DNA from Edward Magee, an investigator for the prosecutor’s office at the time, was found, and testing also couldn’t exclude the original prosecutor in the case, Keith Larner.
“Additional investigating and testing demonstrated that the evidence was not handled properly at the time of (Williams’) conviction,” Matthew Jacober, a special counsel for Bell’s office, told the judge. “As a result, DNA was likely removed and added between 1998 and 2001.”
Bell was not at the hearing because he was at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Bell defeated incumbent Cori Bush in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District Democratic primary on Aug. 6 and will be heavily favored in November.
A consent judgment
While Williams still maintains his innocence, the contaminated DNA evidence was a gut-punch to his case. The finding prompted hours of negotiations between his lawyers and prosecutors.
By Wednesday afternoon, they reached an agreement: Williams would enter an Alford plea, which is not an admission of guilt but an acknowledgment that there is enough evidence for a conviction. In exchange, his death sentence would be commuted to life without parole.
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said that given the contaminated DNA evidence, the plea was Williams’ best option.
“Mr. Williams faced an impossible choice: with an execution date in just over a month, he could take a chance on a legal process that has never given him a fair shake and hope that things turn out differently — or he could take the deal that would save his life and bring the victim’s family the closure they sought,” Maher said in an email. “Anyone would take the deal.”
Peter Joy, a professor at the Washington University School of Law, said many aspects of the case are troubling, including the bungled DNA evidence and the setting of an execution date while an innocence claim was still being examined.
“I hope there’s not a rush to execution,” Joy said.
Supreme Court quickly overrules
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey immediately challenged the new plea and reduced penalty, contending that the lower court lacked the authority to essentially overrule the state’s Supreme Court. Within hours, the high court agreed.
Its order also required Hilton to hold the evidentiary hearing, scheduled for Aug. 28.
In a statement, Bailey said people too often “forget about all of the evidence that was used to convict the defendant — the evidence the jury relied on — and the victims.”
But Williams’ attorney, Tricia Bushnell, noted that Gayle’s family supported the new plea and penalty. She said in a statement that the Supreme Court ruling “directly contradicts the will of a duly elected prosecutor and the community he represents and the wishes of a family who has already lost so much.”
Maher, of the Death Penalty Information Center, said there are also “credible claims of innocence” for men on death row in Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama.
“These cases create an impression that our legal system values process and ‘finality’ more than it values innocence and justice and explains why so many people are losing confidence in the death penalty,” Maher said.
(source: Associated Press)
Judge overrules murder suspect’s motion regarding death penalty constitutionality
A judge overruled a Jefferson City man’s motion to prevent the prosecution in his murder case from seeking the death penalty on Thursday.
Sergio Sayles faces 1st-degree murder charges for the April 2023 homicide of Jasmine King. Shortly after charges were filed against Sayles, Cole County prosecutor Locke Thompson said he plans to seek the death penalty if Sayles is convicted.
In July, Sayles’ attorney filed a motion to declare Missouri’s death penalty scheme unconstitutional and to bar prosecutors from pursuing it as a punishment. It cites racial biases as a factor that “in practice” prevents juries from constitutionally applying the death penalty as a punishment. The motion further states that the death penalty scheme in Missouri “lacks clear and objective standards.”
Judge Brouck Jacobs overruled the motion at a hearing on Thursday, but did sustain a motion to strike one of the aggravating factors in the state’s notice of intent to seek the death penalty. That motion relates to the state’s assertion that Sayles has prior convictions for serious assault.
The defense argued the conviction prosecutors referred to was from Illinois, and that Sayles was not convicted but rather received an adjudication since the case in question was a juvenile case.
Sayles’ case has its next hearing scheduled for October 10.
(source: KOMU news)
USA—-impending/scheduled executions
With the execution of Taberon Honie in Utah on August 8, the USA has now executed 1,594 condemned individuals since the death penalty was re-legalized on July 2, 1976 in the US Supreme Court Gregg v Georgia decision.
Gary Gilmore was the 1st person executed, in Utah, on January 17, 1977. Below is a list of further scheduled executions as the nation continues its shameful practice of state-sponsored killings.
NOTE: The list is likely to change over the coming months as new execution dates are added and possible stays of execution occur.
1595—–Aug. 29———–Loran Cole————–Florida
1596—–Sept. 20———-Freddie Owens———–South Carolina
1597—–Sept. 24———-Travis Mullis———–Texas
1598—–Sept. 24———-Marcellus Williams——Missouri
1599—–Sept. 26———-Alan Miller————-Alabama
1600—–Sept. 26———-Emmanual Littlejohn—–Oklahoma
1601—–Oct. 1————Garcia White————Texas
1602—–Oct. 17———–Robert Roberson———Texas
- 1603—–Nov. 21———–Corey Dale Grayson——Alabama
1604—–Dec. 4————Christopher Collings—-Missouri
(source: Rick Halperin)
Democrats Abandoned Their Anti-Death Penalty Stance. Those on Federal Death Row May Pay the Price.—-Witnesses to Trump’s execution spree are dismayed by Democrats’ decision to remove death penalty opposition from their party platform.
When the Rev. Al Sharpton took the stage to introduce members of the Exonerated 5 on the last night of the Democratic National Convention, it was, for the briefest moment, a nod toward a reality that the DNC had otherwise aggressively avoided: the myriad injustices of our criminal legal system.
“35 years ago my friends and I were in prison for crimes we didn’t commit,” Korey Wise said. As teenagers, Wise, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Antron McCray were wrongly arrested, brutally interrogated, and imprisoned for the rape of a jogger in Central Park. Donald Trump notoriously spent tens of thousands of dollars on full-page ads in the New York Times calling to bring back the death penalty. “Our youth was stolen from us,” Wise said. “Every day as we walked into courtroom, people screamed at us, threatened us because of Donald Trump.”
“He wanted us dead,” Salaam, now a New York City Council member, said. Now in their late 40s and early 50s, the men once known as the Central Park Five stood as a living testament both to Trump’s cruelty and the futures he sought to crush.
The moment was powerful. But it also exposed a tension that had been present throughout the entire convention. All week, the criminal justice system — and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s role in it — had been cast as a force for good: a source of protection and justice for society’s vulnerable. Harris was praised by a parade of sheriffs, state attorneys general, and members of the U.S. security state as the leader who will keep Americans safe. “Crime will keep going down when we put a prosecutor in the White House instead of a convicted felon,” President Joe Biden said in his speech on Monday.
To anyone who has ever watched the Democrats maneuver in an election year, none of this was particularly surprising. The party’s belief that their candidates must adopt the mantle of law and order is a long-held tradition. Yet Wise, Salaam, Santana, Richardson, and McCray were once themselves demonized as looming threats to American society — branded not only as “felons” but also as “superpredators,” a racist and dehumanizing myth weaponized to give prosecutors the power to punish children as adults. Trump’s targeting of these teenagers was certainly repugnant and cruel. But their convictions came out of an era that saw politicians build careers on criminalizing and punishing young people like them. Few were more successful than Biden and Bill Clinton, both of whom were welcomed as heroes at the DNC.
For years, Harris has presented herself as an antidote to these bad old days: a prosecutor who believed in being “smart” rather than “tough” on crime. As a contender during the 2020 presidential primary, she promised a slew of criminal justice reforms, calling mass incarceration “the civil rights issue of our time.” As senator, she sponsored and co-sponsored legislation to make the system fairer and more humane, including a bill to abolish the federal death penalty and grant new sentences to everyone on federal death row. But now, with the presidency within reach, rather than seize the opportunity to follow through on such work, Harris and the Democratic Party have simply moved on from the discussion. The appearance of the Exonerated Five was bookended by yet another round of speeches elevating prosecutors and bashing criminals.
Unmet Promises
Salaam’s presence in particular was a reminder of a specific policy the Democratic National Committee has abandoned. In the years after his wrongful incarceration, he became an activist against the death penalty, telling his story to audiences around the country. (This is how I first got to know Salaam; for years we jointly served on the board of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty.) When the New York State Legislature debated fixing the state’s death penalty law, which had been invalidated by the state’s highest court, Salaam presented himself as a cautionary tale. Had capital punishment been the law of the land the year he was tried, he may well have been executed before proving his innocence.
Yet in the hours before Salaam spoke at the convention, many Americans were learning for the first time that the DNC had removed its goal of ending capital punishment from its official platform. The issue had previously been enshrined in the party platform for years, with the language in 2016 especially robust: “We will abolish the death penalty, which has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment,” it read. “It has no place in the United States of America.”
As a document, the platform does not always reflect the priorities or beliefs of a presidential candidate. The 2016 language, for instance, was at odds with candidate Hillary Clinton’s support for capital punishment. But the decision to remove any reference to the death penalty was nonetheless alarming. At best, it raises questions about Harris’s stated commitment to ending capital punishment, something she not only claimed to want to do during the 2020 primary but took action on as senator. At worst, it signals something much darker, especially for the 40 men on federal death row.
The omission is especially worrisome to those who lived through Trump’s unprecedented federal execution spree, carried out in the waning months of his presidency. Under Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr, 13 people were executed at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute. The last 3 executions were carried out back-to-back over the course of a week, just days before Biden’s inauguration. The cases were emblematic of the death penalty’s cruelty and unfairness. Lisa Montgomery, the only woman under a federal death sentence, had lived a life marked by extreme trauma and mental illness. Corey Johnson was killed despite a Supreme Court ban on executing people with intellectual disabilities. And Dustin Higgs, the last man to die, was executed for 3 murders carried out by another man, who had since said that the government’s case was “bullsh*t.”
Out for Blood
The horror of Trump’s executions made Biden’s 2020 campaign pledge to end the federal death penalty all the more urgent — and his victory over Trump cause for celebration and relief. In this light, the removal of the death penalty from the DNC platform feels like a stunning betrayal. “Biden’s promise 4 years ago created a set of expectations that his 4 years in office so far has not met,” said Robert Dunham, director of the Philadelphia-based Death Penalty Policy Project. “It’s those raised expectations that make the absence of reference to the death penalty so disappointing to people who want him to carry out that promise.”
Still, Dunham doesn’t believe the platform’s revision signals a change in policy. “It isn’t that they dropped their position on the death penalty. The issue here is, when you’re faced with an existential threat to democracy, what issues do you emphasize and what issues don’t you emphasize?”
Rendered Invisible
If relatively few Americans recall Trump’s execution spree, it is almost certainly because it was largely undiscussed by politicians on either side. The executions in Terre Haute were pushed through recklessly, in the earliest days of the Covid pandemic, in a manner that was shocking even to seasoned anti-death penalty activists, legal experts, and defense attorneys. If there was ever a year that presented the moral imperative to speak out against the death penalty, it was then. Instead, the federal executions were completely ignored at Democrats’ virtual convention 4 years ago.
In my correspondence with people on federal death row at the time, several criticized the Democrats for staying silent while Trump killed their friends and neighbors. “The Government is killing people in the name of the tax payers and it is not even a major story,” Christopher Vialva wrote to me before he was put to death in September 2020. He was acutely aware that Biden helped expand the federal death penalty in the first place and was skeptical of his vow to end executions. Those who survived the executions have expressed pessimism that anything will change.
With conservatives’ Project 2025 seeking to execute the rest of the men on federal death row, the stakes could not be higher. But for all their somber warnings of the Republicans’ terrifying blueprint for a second Trump administration, Democrats have been conspicuously silent about this part of the plan.
For those who witnessed the federal executions up close, news that the DNC platform no longer included opposition to the death penalty was dismaying but not reason to lose all hope. “It’s disappointing,” said activist Bill Breeden, who served as a spiritual adviser to Johnson, standing in the death chamber while he was killed by lethal injection. Breeden is certain that the very people who will power the Democrats to victory — especially women and young people — are opposed to capital punishment. But he also is adamant that Harris must win the election. “The opposite, Christian nationalism, is fascism,” he said. As a regular visitor to federal death row, Breeden is acutely aware of the danger posed by a 2nd Trump term. “There will be a serial killer in the White House.”
Yusuf Nur, who served as a spiritual adviser to Higgs and Orlando Hall, another man killed by the Trump administration, echoed Breeden’s sentiments. The federal executions were traumatic for both men. “It really changed my life,” Nur said.
Nur believes the silence about the death penalty evinces a lack of political courage. “They’re scared. They don’t want to bring up anything that they think could be used against them in this election cycle. That’s basically what it boils down to,” Nur said. He questioned how much direct involvement Harris had in the drafting of the platform. “I want to give her the benefit of the doubt,” he said, but he still found it disheartening and a bit ironic. “She wants to project strength and that she cannot be intimidated. But at the same time, this tells me that, yes, she can be intimidated.”
Nur saw a parallel with the campaign’s avoidance of Gaza and its refusal to allow a Palestinian American speaker at the DNC. “It’s the same basic reason,” he said. But whereas the scale and the images of Israel’s genocidal war have made the issue impossible to suppress, executions remain invisible to all but a small handful of Americans who see them up close.
This invisibility has undoubtedly made it easier for Biden to turn his back on his previous promises. So has the silence from Democrats. As Vialva said about the federal government before he was killed, “they want us quiet so they can operate without the public caring too much. They keep us secret.”
(source: Liliana Segura, theintercept.com)
Death penalty divide: Trump urges more capital punishment while Harris silent
Former President Donald Trump has signaled he will continue his administration’s aggressive pursuit of the death penalty if he is elected, while Vice President Kamala Harris has gone mum on the issue.
Trump made his most detailed comments yet on capital punishment since launching his campaign during remarks at the Arizona border on Thursday, at the same time that Harris has come under scrutiny for her silence on the matter.
As he was addressing punishments for illegal migrants who commit crimes, Trump said he would impose the death penalty “for anyone guilty of child or woman sex trafficking.”
Trump has also repeatedly suggested that a solution to the nation’s drug trafficking and addiction problems is to impose the death penalty on drug traffickers, citing countries such as China, which he has said successfully combats illegal drugs with a punishment of death. The former president reiterated those sentiments Thursday.
“We’ll also impose the death penalty on major drug dealers and traffickers,” Trump said. “In other countries on their immigration papers, there is a statement that says, ‘Death for drug traffickers.’ Big letters, big bold letters, 10 times the size of everything else on the page. I saw it this morning, and those are the countries where they have no problem with drugs.”
It is unclear which countries Trump was referring to, but Politifact found in 2018 that Trump accurately made similar comments about China and Singapore imposing the death penalty for drug trafficking. The outlet also noted, though, that there is little data to assess how effective the policy was in those countries.
Trump said his administration would also seek the death penalty for those who kill police, U.S. Border Patrol officers, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
Lastly, Trump addressed the protracted period of time that criminals wait on death row, saying his administration would seek a “quicker trial, not a trial that lasts 15 years and everybody gets exhausted.”
His comments align with the Trump administration’s historic use of the death penalty. 16 federal executions have been carried out since 1988, all by lethal injection. 13 of them were under Trump’s tenure, when Attorney General Bill Barr lifted an Obama-era freeze on them.
Harris, a former district attorney and California attorney general, has embraced a persona as “prosecutor” on the campaign trail, but she has a complicated history with the death penalty and has taken no position on it since she was chosen as Trump’s opponent.
During Harris’s tenure as vice president, the Department of Justice vowed to halt federal executions, but it did not entirely live up to that promise.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on them in 2021 but changed gears in January when government prosecutors sought the death penalty for 20-year-old Payton Gendron. Gendron pleaded guilty to murdering 10 black people in a racially motivated attack at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022.
Prosecutors under Garland also asked for the death penalty in 2 cases brought by the Trump administration: Robert Bowers’s murder of 11 people at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue and Islamic extremist Sayfullo Saipov’s murder of 8 people in a New York City bike path.
No federal executions have been carried out since Harris became vice president, but the DOJ’s authorization of the death penalty in rare cases upset opponents of it. Gendron is fighting his punishment in court, Bowers’s appeal is still playing out, and Saipov received a life sentence despite prosecutors asking for death. Bowers is among about 40 defendants currently sitting on death row.
20 years ago, Harris opposed the death penalty and received significant blowback when she announced as San Francisco district attorney that she would not seek it in the slaying of police officer Isaac Espinoza.
But later, when she campaigned for California attorney general, she said she would “enforce the death penalty as the law dictates.”
She once again flip-flopped on capital punishment when she unsuccessfully ran for president in 2019, saying she would institute a moratorium on it.
Now, amid a competitive campaign against Trump, Harris is facing a crossroads as she has embraced a tough-on-crime brand, at least when it comes to her opponent, whom she describes as a “convicted felon.” Her party has historically opposed the death penalty, but Trump has called for cracking down on crime with it.
In addition to Harris’s unclear stance on the topic, the newly released Democratic 2024 platform makes no mention of the death penalty, which the Huff Post observed was a first for the party since 2004.
A Harris campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
(source: Washington Examiner)
Exonerated members of Central Park 5 warn about Trump at Democratic convention—-The former president has never apologized to the group for taking out newspaper ads calling for the death penalty or for his public antagonism toward the teens in 1989.
4 of the exonerated members of the so-called Central Park 5 — a group of 5 teenagers wrongfully imprisoned for the 1989 rape of a jogger — appeared Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention, warning of what a second Donald Trump presidency could bring.
“35 years ago, my friends and I were in prison for a crime we did not commit,” one of them, Korey Wise, said Thursday. “Our youth was stolen from us. Every day, as we walked into a courtroom, people screamed at us, threatening us because of Donald Trump.”
Their concerns about the former president stemmed from personal experience and go back more than three decades: In 1989, 5 teenagers, all Black or Latino, were arrested after a jogger was found brutally sexually assaulted and tied up in Central Park.
One of them, then-15-year-old Yusef Salaam, would later recount how police used questionable methods, including depriving the teens of food and sleep, to get them to falsely confess to the crime “under duress.” Though all would later recant their confessions and there was no evidence linking them to the rape, the teens became publicly branded as the Central Park 5, were wrongfully convicted and spent years in prison.
During their trial, Trump, already a prominent figure in New York City for his real estate dealings, took out full-page ads in 4 newspapers calling for the death penalty to be reinstated.
“I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes,” Trump stated in the ads. “They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”
It wasn’t until 2002, when DNA evidence confirmed a different man’s confession that he had raped the Central Park jogger, that authorities dropped charges against the Central Park 5. The group became referred to as “the Exonerated 5” and in 2014 reached a $41 million wrongful-conviction settlement with New York City. Salaam, a Democrat, won election in November to the New York City Council.
But Trump would never apologize to the group for taking out the newspaper ads or for his public antagonism toward the teens in 1989. During his 2020 presidential campaign, 3 decades later, Trump continued to call into question the group’s innocence.
“You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt … some of the prosecutors think the city should never have settled that case, and we’ll leave it at that,” Trump said in 2019.
On Thursday, the 4th and final night of the Democratic convention, Salaam and Wise stood on stage with 2 others of the Central Park 5 who had been exonerated: Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson.
“He wanted us dead,” Salaam said, referring to Trump but avoiding using his name. “Today we are exonerated because the actual perpetrator confessed and DNA proved it. That guy says he still stands by the original guilty verdict. He dismisses the scientific evidence rather than admit he was wrong. He has never changed and he never will.”
It was not the 1st time Salaam has warned what a Trump presidency could mean. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Salaam publicly spoke out about his concerns that Trump had only doubled down on his actions toward the Central Park 5, even after the group was exonerated.
“For 27 years, I’ve been in Donald Trump’s crosshairs,” Salaam wrote in an October 2016 op-ed for The Washington Post, recounting the fear and confusion he felt in 1989 when he and his friends were wrongfully arrested in the case. Those terrified feelings were only magnified when they learned that Trump had called for them to face the death penalty in full-page newspaper ads.
“He called for blood in the most public way possible,” Salaam wrote then. “… I don’t know why the future Republican nominee bought those ads, but it seems part and parcel with his racist attitudes.”
Trump, he added, never apologized for calling for their deaths.
“In fact, he’s somehow still convinced that we belong in prison. When the Republican nominee was recently asked about the Central Park Five, he said, ‘They admitted they were guilty.’ … It’s further proof of Trump’s bias, racism and inability to admit that he’s wrong,” Salaam wrote.
On Thursday, Salaam urged the crowd to throw their support behind Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in November.
Trump “thinks that hate is the animating force in America. It is not,” Salaam said. “We have the constitutional right to vote. In fact, it is a human right. So let us use it … and together, on November 5, we will usher in Kamala Harris and Tim Walz into the White House.”
(source: Washington Post)
‘He’s never changed, he never will:’ Exonerated Central Park 5 warn against Trump after his death penalty crusade—-Wrongfully convicted men that Trump attacked in the 1980s took the stage at the DNC to back Kamala Harris
When 5 Black and Latino teenagers were wrongly convicted of the rape of a jogger in New York City’s Central Park in 1989, Donald Trump bought out full-page ads in all four major New York newspapers with a headline screaming to “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY.”
“I want to hate these murderers and I always will,” Trump wrote. “I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them.”
Their convictions were vacated in 2002, and the city paid $41m in 2014 to settle a civil rights lawsuit. Trump has refused to recant or apologize for those statements.
One of those teens, Yusef Salaam, now 50, spent nearly 7 years in prison for his wrongful conviction. Last year, he was elected to New York’s City Council, representing Harlem.
On August 22, Salaam stood on stage at the Democratic National Convention to endorse the woman running against the man who wanted him jailed.
Salaam was joined by 3 of the other exonerated men from the case — Korey Wise, Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson — to support Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz.
“45 wanted us unalive,” said Salaam, noting Trump’s nickname as the 45th president.
“He wanted us dead,” Salaam said. “Today, we are exonerated because the actual perpetrator confessed, and DNA proved it. … He dismisses the scientific evidence rather than admit he was wrong. He has never changed, and he never will.”
Their story has been the subject of a Ken Burns documentary and the acclaimed series When They See Us by Ava DuVernay, exploring a broken judicial system and the fog of racism and hate that Trump exploited.
“That man thinks that hate is the animating force in America. It is not,” Salaam said. “We have the constitutional right to vote. In fact, it is a human right. Let’s use it.”
Civil rights activist Al Sharpton, who advocated for the men in the 1980s, introduced them to the stage.
“I see a candidate who has sought to reform and uphold the law, and a man who wrongly assumes his mug shot appeals to Black Americans,” he said.
Wise spent the longest time in prison among the five of them. He was jailed for 13 years. The men spent a combined 41 years in prison among them.
Trump “called us animals,” Wise said. “He spent $85,000 on a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for our execution.”
Harris has “consistently committed to making government work for those of us who have been at a disadvantage,” Sharpton said.
Trump, meanwhile, has been “making himself richer and sowing division.”
(source: independent.co.uk)
Student Scholars: Moral Disengagement Theory and Support for Capital Punishment
In this new series, the Death Penalty Information Center will occasionally highlight student works on capital punishment, including master’s and PhD theses, and law review articles.
University of Alabama master’s degree candidate Christine Poole’s 2024 thesis explores the use of moral disengagement theory in justifying support for capital punishment. Using online surveys, she evaluated participants’ knowledge of the death penalty, support for the death penalty, and their use of moral disengagement techniques in approaching the issue.
“Moral disengagement is a preemptive cognitive process that justifies socially unacceptable behavior and reduces the associated guilt,” Ms. Poole explains. Her study found that many supporters of capital punishment distanced themselves ethically and morally from death row prisoners and used 3 elements of moral disengagement theory – euphemistic labeling, advantageous comparison, and dehumanization – to justify their views on the death penalty. “Euphemistic labeling is when language is sanitized to avoid the harsh realities of the action,” she wrote, and “advantageous comparison is where individuals compare their behaviors to those who have committed worse actions to appear more acceptable.”
For example, euphemistic labeling might use “capital punishment” or “justice being served” instead of “execution”; advantageous comparison might contrast the method of lethal injection with graphic details of crimes committed; and dehumanization is used to characterize death row prisoners as ‘monsters’ or ‘animals’. Ms. Poole found that 66.7% of supporters of the death penalty among the study participants adopted a mechanistic tone of dehumanization (p.31) — denying individuals “warmth, agency, emotionality, and the cognitive capacity for depth” (p.6).
Ms. Poole’s methods and findings present a new approach to understanding how opinions on capital punishment are shaped and defended.
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
FIJI:
Return of death penalty not solution to Fiji’s fight against drugs, human rights chair and home affairs minister say
The chairperson of the Fiji Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission (FHRADC) shot down suggestion by a senior government minister to bring back the death penalty to deter international drug traffickers.
This week, Women and Children’s Minister, Lynda Tabuya, told local media that she wants “see the death penalty brought to Fiji for those who traffic large quantities of drugs”.
The minister said Fiji continues to be used as a transit point for drug traffickers.
“We are vulnerable, our borders are vulnerable, we need to explore the possibility of the death penalty to protect our people,” she said.
However, the FHARDC is calling for stronger policies, laws, and judicial processes to tackle the issue.
Fiji abolished the death penalty in 1979 and the country’s constitution ensure that every person has a right to life.
“The Commission is of the view that the death penalty is not the solution to the rising drugs problem,” FHARDC chairperson Pravesh Sharma said in statement on Thursday.
Sharma said capital punishment “is a serious violation of human rights”.
“Rather, the government should conduct baseline research to determine why our people are engaging in drugs, and then put in place measures to better address the issue,” he said.
Sharma called for “rehabilitation of addicted people; to prevent drugs from entering Fiji”.
“We need to strengthen out border security, raise awareness, and educate our people about the impacts of drugs.”
He added severe prison sentences for convicted drug offenders “will continue to have a deterrent effect”.
This follows Minister of Social Protection Lynda Tabuya’s suggestion of capital punishment for those who traffic large quantities of drugs.
Tabuya’s comments were met with mixed reactions from the Fijian public on social media, with comments including “this is a really dangerous rhetoric” to “a death penalty sentence will save our country”.
At least 2 MPs have voiced opposition to the suggestion.
Minister emphasises ‘humane strategies’
Home Affairs Minister, Pio Tikoduadua, who has been at the forefront of the fight against drugs, said the death penalty was not something that is part of their strategy.
He said the key to tackling the country’s drugs crisis “lies in comprehensive and humane strategies that address the underlying issues, while ensuring justice is served”.
Tikoduadua said the Fijian government’s recent initiatives, such as the National Countering Illicit Narcotics Strategy 2023-2028 and the ongoing Police Reset, were designed to tackle these complex issues more effectively.”
The Narcotics Strategy, launched in June, focuses on comprehensive measures, including demand and supply reduction, alternative development, and harm reduction strategies.
It also involves the establishment of a Counter Narcotics Bureau with a budget allocation of $2.5 million, tasked with leading enforcement operations and enhancing border control measures.
“In parallel, the Police Reset aims to modernise the police force through capacity building and cultural shifts, backed by partnerships like the MOU with the Australian Federal Police.” Tikoduadua said.
“These strategies represent a holistic approach to addressing drug trafficking and related crimes through stronger institutions, better resources, and international collaboration, which are likely to yield more sustainable results.
He added these were “crucial steps” taken by the government to address the problem.
“These efforts prioritise building a secure environment through robust law enforcement and community-based prevention strategies, avoiding the irreversible consequences associated with the death penalty.”
(source: rnz.co.na)
VIETNAM:
Death sentence for 3 men involved in drug trafficking from Laos to Vi?t Nam
3 men, including a Laotian national, were sentenced to death while 4 others, including 2 Laotian nationals, were sentenced to life imprisonment for illegally trafficking drugs from Laos into Vi?t Nam.
The People’s Court of the northern province of Hà Nam on Thursday sentenced 3 men, including a Laotian national, to death for illegally trafficking 23.5 kg of drugs from Laos to Vi?t Nam.
4 others, including 2 Laotian nationals, were sentenced to life imprisonment for the same crime.
According to the indictment, at 5.30pm on December 16, 2022, a task force led by the Ministry of Public Security’s Department of Drug Crime Investigation, in coordination with other units and the Hà Nam Provincial Police, caught several individuals red-handed using illegal drugs in Châu Son Ward, Ph? Lý City, Hà Nam Province.
The individuals involved were identified as Nguy?n Van Sáng, residing in Thanh Châu Ward, Ph? Lý, Xia Xiong, Toua Xiong and Chua Xong, all Laotian nationals.
The police seized numerous pieces of evidence, including 6 nylon bags containing various types of drugs and related items.
Further investigation led to the arrest of Nguy?n Tu?n Anh, residing in Phuong Canh Ward, Nam T? Liêm District, Hà N?i and Hoàng Phuong Th?o, residing in Nguy?n Du Ward, Hai Bà Trung District also in Hà N?i, on December 18, 2022, for drug trafficking.
The police also searched Tu?n Anh’s residence at Hoàng Van Th? Ward, Hoàng Mai District, Hà N?i, where they found and seized three packages of various drugs.
Tu?n Anh confessed to buying the drugs from Sáng and Hoàng Th? Khánh Ly, both residing in Thanh Tuy?n Ward, Ph? Lý, Hà Nam Province.
Sáng, Xia Xiong and Tu?n Anh were identified as the masterminds, while Th?o, Ly, Toua Xiong and Chua Xong were accomplices.
Xia Xiong purchased the drugs in Laos and assigned Toua Xiong to transport them to Vi?t Nam, where they were delivered to Sáng. Xia Xiong also tasked Chua Xong with travelling to Vi?t Nam to receive the drugs and stay at Sáng’s house to ensure the payment was made.
After receiving the drugs from Xia Xiong, Sáng sold them to Tu?n Anh and Th?o in Hà N?i.
Between September 2022 and December 16, 2022, the group trafficked a total of 23.56 kg of various drugs.
Sáng, Tu?n Anh, and Xia Xiong were given death sentences for illegal drug trafficking under Clause 4, Article 251 of the Penal Code. Additionally, Sáng received a two-year prison sentence for illegal possession of military weapons, with the final punishment being the death penalty.
Toua Xiong, Chua Xong, Th?o and Ly were sentenced to life imprisonment for illegal drug trafficking.
(source: vietnamnews.vn)
SAUDI ARABIA:
34 Egyptians among dozens facing execution for drug offences—-At least 50 people face the death penalty for drug offences in Tabuk prison, with many tortured while on death row, says a rights group
Dozens of prisoners in Saudi Arabia are facing the death penalty for drug offences, as rights groups warn of a surge in executions despite authorities’ pledges to stop the punishment.
The European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) said on Thursday that there has been a sharp increase in the use of the death penalty between May and August, with executions reaching 30 by 22 August.
In Tabuk General Prison alone, at least 50 people are facing execution. According to ESOHR, 34 Egyptians are among those sentenced to death in the prison, along with other foreigners, including Jordanians and Syrians.
Two Egyptian nationals, Walid al-Baqi and Youssef Khudair, were executed on 13 August on charges of smuggling marijuana and amphetamines, the rights group said.
ESOHR also documented abuses faced by Egyptians on death row in Tabuk prison, including a lack from the Egyptian embassy in the kingdom, denial of their right to adequate defence, failure to appoint lawyers for them and instances of torture and ill-treatment.
Between 2020 and 2022, Saudi Arabia halted executions for drug offences. However, they resumed in December 2022, provoking an outcry from campaigners.
The kingdom has executed hundreds of people in recent years for various offences, including political dissent.
In 2023, a joint report by ESOHR and Reprieve revealed that Riyadh’s execution rate has almost doubled since King Salman and his son, Mohammed bin Salman, came to power in 2015. Between 2015 and 2022, executions surged by 82 %.
In February this year, seven Saudi men were killed in a mass execution, the highest number put to death in one day since 81 were killed in March 2022.
According to Reprieve, foreign nationals, including female domestic workers and drug offenders, are “disproportionately” targeted.
Despite the crown prince’s pledge in a 2018 interview to minimise executions, Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s most prolific executioners.
(source: middleeasteye.net)
IRAN—-execution
Prisoner executed for drug-related charges in Tabriz
Iranian authorities executed Mohammad Khaled Jahangiri, a prisoner from Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan Province, on drug-related charges in Tabriz Central Prison, East Azerbaijan Province, on 22 August.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that Jahangiri was transferred to solitary confinement for execution the day before.
Jahangiri was a father of 2 from the village of Balu in Orumiyeh.
According to statistics compiled by the KHRN, at least 12 Kurdish prisoners have been executed in the past four weeks in various prisons across the country, including those in Orumiyeh, Kermanshah, Ghezel Hesar (Karaj), Khorramabad, Sanandaj, Sabzevar and Miandoab.
These prisoners had been convicted on charges ranging from drug offences to premeditated murder and “spreading corruption on earth” (efsad-e fel arz).
(source: kurdistanhumanrights.org)
UN warns of unfair detentions, death sentences for Iran’s minorities
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has raised concerns about ethnic and ethno-religious minorities in Iran facing disproportionate detentions and death sentences.
The statement released on Friday called on Iran “to review its legal framework, repeal vaguely worded criminal offenses punishable by death, ensure fair and due process for minority groups, and establish a moratorium on the death penalty with the goal of abolishing it.”
The Committee also expressed concern over reports of “grave human rights violations and abuses committed by law enforcement officers” against ethnic and ethno-religious minority protestors during the November 2019, July 2021, and September 2022 protests, particularly in regions with high minority populations. It called on Iran to conduct impartial investigations into these allegations and to provide reparations for the victims.
Amidst growing repression, rights groups warn that ethnic and religious minorities in Iran, particularly the Kurdish and Baluch communities, are facing escalating challenges, with the Islamic Republic’s actions being the root cause of their misery.
Iran’s leading Sunni cleric, Mowlavi Abdolhamid, voiced sharp criticism on Friday against the ruling establishment for its persecution of religious minorities. He emphasized that the pursuit of justice is the people’s paramount demand and urged the immediate release of political prisoners in Iran.
The outspoken Friday Imam of Sistan-Baluchestan Province stands as a prominent advocate for minority rights in Iran.
In Sistan-Baluchistan, a Sunni-majority Baluch province, the community has faced the highest execution rate in Iran over the past 44 years.
Last year, the former UN Special Rapporteur for Iran described the levels of killings, torture, and brutality against the Baluch minority as “shocking.”
Javaid Rehman reported that since the onset of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, more than 1/2 of those killed were from Baluch and Kurdish provinces, with 63% of child victims hailing from these regions.
The protests were sparked by the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman in Tehran while in the custody of the morality police. The authorities carried out a harsh crackdown that resulted in the deaths of approximately 550 individuals and the arrest of over 20,000 others, which was condemned as a crime against humanity by a UN fact-finding mission.
Rehman highlighted the disproportionate targeting and execution of Baluchis, who make up only 2-6% of Iran’s population but account for 30% of executions. He also noted that security forces have targeted them extrajudicially, with at least 90 extrajudicial killings, including 22 fuel carriers, in the first 9 months of 2023.
Amnesty International reports that Iran has the highest execution rate after China.
The former UN Special Rapporteur stated that Baluchis are “systematically undermined,” left in poverty, and politically, economically, and socially disempowered, calling this treatment a “systematic state policy.”
Amidst the diverse tapestry of Iran’s ethnic groups, the Kurds stand as another minority deeply impacted by systemic discrimination. According to Amnesty International, Kurds in Iran have long endured the repression of their social, political, and cultural rights. Kurdish activists are frequently subjected to arbitrary arrests, prosecution, and torture, facing grossly unfair trials in Revolutionary Courts, often culminating in death sentences.
(source: iranintl.com)
AUGUST 23, 2024:
PENNSYLVANIA:
Superior Court rules Allegheny County judge can’t bar death penalty in Bellevue murder trial
The Superior Court this week cleared the way for prosecutors to continue seeking the death penalty against a man accused of gunning down his ex-girlfriend on a Bellevue street in 2022, ruling the former judge in the case had no authority to bar capital punishment in the case.
Former Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Anthony Mariani, who retired earlier this year, had previously ruled prosecutors could no long seek the death penalty against 27-year-old Deangelo Zieglar, citing Gov. Josh Shapiro’s de facto moratorium on executions.
“As our review reveals,” President Judge Anne E. Lazarus wrote in the opinion, “the trial court has acted outside the parameters of the law.”
The ruling means Zieglar’s case will return to the trial court and proceed as a death penalty case. The public defender’s office could appeal the ruling.
Zieglar is charged with homicide in the fatal shooting of his ex-girlfriend, Rachel Dowden, in January 2022. Dowden had a protection from abuse order against Zieglar, who she’d alleged had a history of domestic violence. She’d legally bought a handgun for her own protection, which police say Zieglar later stole and used to kill her.
The opinion comes 5 months after a 3-judge panel heard arguments in the case and more than a year after Judge Mariani initially ruled that he would allow prosecutors to seat a death penalty jury in Zieglar’s case. He based his arguments in part on a 1986 case in which the defendant was given a new sentencing hearing after the judge in that case gave these instructions to the jury:
“Somewhere down the line, if you do impose the death penalty, the case will be reviewed thoroughly. And after thorough review the death penalty may be carried out.”
Judge Mariani had cited Gov. Shaprio’s pledge not to sign any death warrants, saying it would be “patently unreasonable and fundamentally unfair” to put jurors through the process necessary to decide a death penalty case “when the outcome has already been determined.”
Judges were skeptical during the brief oral arguments on the issue in March.
“The fact that Gov. Shapiro refuses to sign a death warrant doesn’t matter,” Judge Lazarus said at the time. “Even though Gov. Shapiro’s predecessor did the same thing, it’s still temporary because the legislature hasn’t ruled on this.”
In the Superior Court’s opinion, the judge said the sentencing procedure for 1st-degree murder is clear: “… there is nothing in [the sentencing statute], or any other law that we are aware of, that allows the trial court to deny the Commonwealth’s ability to seek the death penalty.”
(source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
NORTH CAROLINA:
NC man accused of killing mom, 2 kids
A Charlotte man accused of killing a woman and her 2 children will learn his fate Thursday on whether or not he’ll face the death penalty.
On March 15, Markayla Johnson, 22, and her 2 young children, Miracle Johnson, 4, and Messiah Johnson, 7 months, were found dead at an apartment on Orchard Trace Lane in Charlotte after they were reported missing on March 3. Family members had said they hadn’t seen Markayla in months.
MArkayla’s boyfriend Benjamin Taylor was captured hiding in a tent in California near the Mexico border on March 16th after a multi-agency manhunt led them to an area where they said criminals were known to try and flee to.
He is charged with 3 counts of 1st-degree murder and conceal/fail to report death. According to toxicology reports, both children had fentanyl in their systems, which is listed as what led to their deaths. 7-month-old Messiah also tested positive for cocaine and 4-ANPP, a chemical often used to illegally make fentanyl. 2 drugs used to sedate, diphenhydramine and melatonin, were also found in the infant’s system.
(source: WSPA news)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
South Carolina ACLU asks court to allow interview of death row inmate before execution
As a South Carolina man awaits execution on death row, lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are asking a federal court to supersede prison policy and allow him to give media interviews to tell his story and make the case that his life should be spared.
Marion Bowman, 44, has sat on death row for more than 2 decades after being convicted for the 2001 murder of Kandee Martin — a 21-year-old woman whom he fatally shot over a monetary dispute when he was 20 years old. His execution has yet to be scheduled, but ACLU lawyers cautioned in a court filing that he “could be executed within weeks.”
Bowman is not seeking to be released from prison, but is petitioning Gov. Henry McMaster for executive clemency to commute his sentence to life in prison. However, efforts to publicize his case have proved difficult because of policies at the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) that prevent him — and all other inmates — from giving certain types of interviews to the media.
According to official policy, “personal contact interviews … will be prohibited.” The prohibition includes in-person interviews, telephone interviews, and any interviews conducted with audio or visual recording. The only means by which the media can interview an inmate is through written correspondence.
Lawyers at the ACLU already have in-person access to Bowman and communicate with him over the phone and in video calls through their roles as legal counsel — but are barred from making visual and audio recordings to provide to the public. According to a court filing the ACLU desires to make audio recordings to develop a podcast and video recordings to be published.
Although every state imposes restrictions on media access to inmates, South Carolina is “the only state that bans this category of speech outright,” South Carolina ACLU communications director Paul Bowers told CNA.
ACLU lawyers are asking the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina to rule that this practice violates the First Amendment because it “suppresses a substantial amount of protected speech.” They are also asking the court to expedite their request to block the department’s enforcement of the policy so they can interview Bowman and publish audio and visual of the interviews before he is executed by the state.
“A story about Marion Bowman — that is, a telling of his case and his life behind bars — is not functionally equivalent to a story by Marion Bowman,” the lawsuit argues. “A blog … about how great a loss it would be if South Carolina kills Marion Bowman is no substitute for the public hearing Marion’s own voice, his own laugh, his own anguish.”
South Carolina ACLU legal director Allen Chaney said in a statement that the restrictions on media interviews are also unfair to the public
“That South Carolina shrouds capital punishment in secrecy acknowledges a powerful truth: the death penalty is barbaric and unjust, and public scrutiny would end it for good,” Chaney said. “The public deserves a chance to meaningfully encounter the person being murdered on their behalf. We aim to give them that.”
Bowers told CNA that death row is “a very hidden away part of our state” and that “people don’t think very long and hard about the death penalty.” Yet, if given access to recorded interviews of someone who is awaiting execution, people would “have to be confronted with the faces and voices of the people we are preparing to kill.”
“We want people to think long and hard about what we’re preparing to do,” Bowers said.
“Many [death row inmates] have committed heinous crimes, but [Bowman is] an example of someone who has changed his life to the extent that he can while incarcerated — someone who has sought redemption while on death row,” Bowers added.
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, told CNA that Catholics, in particular, should oppose the death penalty and have a “responsibility to bring the inhumanity of the death penalty into the light.” She also criticized policies that prevent the public from learning about those who have been sentenced to death.
“Every effort to make secret the processes and procedures of capital punishment or to obscure the lived experiences of people on death row is a manifestation of this system of death,” Murphy said. “In the Gospel of Luke we are reminded, ‘whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops.’”
The Catholic Mobilizing Network works closely with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on efforts to oppose the death penalty and uphold the human dignity of people who are incarcerated.
When reached by CNA, a spokesperson for SCDC provided the department’s filing with the court, which defends the policy against First Amendment objections.
The SCDC filing argues that other states impose restrictions on interviews and that journalists have “frequently interviewed inmates through the medium of written correspondence” in South Carolina.
It further asserts that the current policy is necessary to prevent security risks such as coded messages to criminal associates, to prevent a lack of sensitivity to crime victims, and to prevent a risk of institutional violence or the creation of celebrity status based on comments made by an inmate to the media, among other reasons.
The last execution in South Carolina occurred in May of 2011, after which executions were put on hold because drug companies would not sell the products required for lethal injection.
In 2021, however, South Carolina legalized executions by the electric chair and by firing squad. The state has also obtained the drugs necessary for lethal injection. After the South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed last month that the death penalty — and the methods permitted in state law — are permissible by the state constitution, the SCDC expressed its intent to resume executions.
(source: Tyler Arnold is a staff reporter for Catholic News Agency)
FLORIDA—-impending execution
1st execution of 2024 deemed as ‘hypocrisy’
In its 111-year history, investigations and former students accounts have chronicled how the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys both in Marianna and Okeechobee were not so much a reform school but rather a place where physical, sexual and mental abuse was rampant.
In June, Gov. Ron DeSantis quietly signed a bill — without any press present and with only a handful of Dozier survivors and three representatives who sponsored HB 21 — in which the state will divide $20 million in compensation between those who attended the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in North Florida between 1940 and 1975, as well as the Okeechobee School. This followed years of investigation, including in 2008 when then Gov. Charlie Crist in 2008 directed the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the Dozier School and the deaths alleged there, and a federal investigation that closed the school in 2011, which was under the control of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.
One moniker from the institution in Marianna was the “White House Boys,” which according to News Service of Florida derived from the white concrete building where boys were beaten and raped by school workers.
One of those boys is Loran Cole, who was housed at Dozier School for Boys for 5 1/2 months in 1984, at the age of 17.
And despite quietly signing that bill in June recognizing the brutality residents of the school faced, the governor signed a death warrant for the White House Boy in July. Cole is slated to be executed Aug. 29, 2024. It is the first execution warrant DeSantis has signed in 2024.
Cole was sentenced to death in 1995, for the murder of John Edwards, an 18-year-old Florida State University student. Cole was also convicted of robbing, raping and kidnapping of Edwards’ sister Pam, who was with her brother camping in the Ocala National Forest. Cole’s execution warrant comes nearly 10 months after Florida’s last execution, which was the last of the state’s 6 executions carried out in 2023.
In post-conviction appeals, Cole’s lawyers have chronicled the neglect, abuse and trauma Cole experienced — including daily beatings that resulted in 2 broken legs and being raped by guards — and argued it changed the entire trajectory of his life and led to the commission of his crime. Cole’s lawyers argued his “post-1984 criminal record also goes to show the effect that life in Dozier had on his psyche. That horrible place helped create the Loran Cole who sits on death row today.”
In a letter to DeSantis, Florida’s Catholic bishops implored DeSantis to stay Cole’s execution and commute his sentence to life without possibility of parole (the codefendant in murder of John Edwards was given life in prison).
“Mr. Cole himself was beaten, raped and tormented at Dozier,” said Michael Sheedy, executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, in an Aug. 14, 2024, letter to DeSantis on behalf of the bishops of Florida. “He witnessed torture and daily beatings of other students. He was once forced to clean up the remains of another student who died by suicide after jumping off a building. He had his legs broken after trying to escape. Mr. Cole’s jury never heard about the physical and mental abuse he endured at the hands of officers at Dozier.”
Survivors of Dozier tell stories of beatings with leather belts, students being tied to a bed, students being put in dryers, forced labor and rape. Various news reports indicate between 80 and 100 children died at Dozier, with the location of their remains is unknown. A graveyard near the school has several unmarked crosses, which survivors believe are boys killed by staffers.
In 2010, while on death row, Cole watched a documentary about Dozier and was flooded with memories of his time there. He shared his memories with a prison mental health counselor.
“Never having received mental health and trauma treatment until his arrival on death row in his late 20s, Mr. Cole, at age 57, is not the same person who committed the grave crimes for which he was convicted,” Sheedy stated in his letter.
The 2023 Florida Culture of Life Conference included several speakers, among them were Maria DeLiberato, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
Maria DeLiberato, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said there are a “half dozen other men Florida’s death row who survived the abuse at Dozier, as well as countless others in the Florida Department of Corrections.” She described the governor’s signing of a death warrant on a Dozier survivor as “hypocrisy,” and said the “state-sanctioned cycle of abuse” must stop.
“Horrifically, shortly before Loran was released from Dozier, he was forced to clean up a smattering of blood and brain matter from another child who had jumped off the roof of one of the cottages and died by suicide,” DeLiberato said. “In passing the compensation bill for Dozier survivors, the state of Florida recognized its direct responsibility for the profound and lifelong impact of the horrific torture and abuse those men suffered there. For the State of Florida to turn around less than a month later and say they are justified in killing one of those survivors is unconscionable.”
Prayer vigils
Prayer vigils are scheduled throughout the state of Florida for the day of the execution, Aug. 29, at local parishes. San Pedro Parish in North Port and Sacred Heart Parish in Punta Gorda (Diocese of Venice) will host vigils. In the Diocese of Palm Beach, a vigil will be held at the Cathedral of St. Ignatius Loyola in Palm Beach Gardens and at the corner of Military Trail and Holly Road. See the linked prayer vigil list here and above.
Tallahassee Citizens Against the Death Penalty will lead a candlelight vigil in front of the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee at the time of the 6 p.m. execution. Because fencing and metal barricades have been placed around the outside perimeter of the mansion, the vigil will take place outside the perimeter in the small parking area that faces the mansion.
If the execution takes place, the group will also lead a service of remembrance for Cole and victim John Edwards the following day, Aug. 30, at noon at the Capitol Rotunda.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty will be across the highway from the death chamber at Florida State Prison beginning 5 p.m. Aug. 29. In the Diocese of Orlando, buses will pick up passengers at Daytona Beach, Ormond Beach, and Palm Coast and transport them to vigil in Raiford. First stop is Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, 201 University Blvd. in Daytona Beach at 1:30 followed by stops at Destination Daytona in Ormond Beach and a Winn Dixie on SR 100 and Old Kings Road in Palm Coast.
For those unable to attend a live vigil, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty will also host a live, informative, and prayerful online vigil beginning at 5 p.m. It will include live on-the-ground coverage of the vigils at the prison. Register here, or watch on the Death Penalty Action Facebook Page.
(source: thefloridacatholic.org)
Cole Warrant: Briefing complete at Florida Supreme Court—-As of Monday this week, the briefing in Cole’s appeal pending at the Supreme Court of Florida is complete. When the Court will issue its decision is unclear.
Loran Cole’s execution is scheduled for August 29 at 6:00 p.m.
Shortly after Gov. DeSantis signed the warrant, Cole, through his attorneys, filed a successive motion for postconviction relief in the circuit court. (The Motion is covered here.) The court decided to not hold an evidentiary hearing on Cole’s claims.
After the circuit court issued an Order summarily denying Cole’s claims (covered here), Cole appealed the ruling to the Florida Supreme Court.
As of Monday this week, the briefing in Cole’s appeal pending at the Supreme Court of Florida is complete.
On August 15, the State filed its 69-page Answer Brief.
On Monday, Cole filed his Reply Brief.
Therefore, briefing is now complete. Oral argument has not been scheduled on Cole’s claims. In its Answer Brief, the State contends that oral argument is unnecessary.
When the Court will issue its decision is unclear. If the Court denies Cole’s claims, Cole will still have an opportunity to file a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, which also must be briefed and decided before the execution—unless a stay of execution is granted.
All of the briefing can be found on the Court’s docket here, at: https://acis.flcourts.gov/portal/court/68f021c4-6a44-4735-9a76-5360b2e8af13/case/3968b51f-1fb9-4967-b1a4-9c31f296fe90
(source: fladeathpenalty.substack.com)
After delay, convicted Florida killer Wade Wilson faces death sentence decision Tuesday
Wade Wilson, a Fort Myers, Florida man convicted of killing 2 Cape Coral women in 2019, is facing the death penalty at his sentencing scheduled for Tuesday, August 27.
Wilson’s legal team filed a motion on July 3 asking for a new trial or acquittal on the murder and several other charges. Trial judge Nicholas Thompson denied the motion on August 15.
A jury found Wilson, 30, guilty on June 12 of the murders of Kristine Melton, 35, and Diane Ruiz, 43, and after weighing aggravating and mitigating circ*mstances recommended the death penalty.
It will be up to Thompson to impose death sentences or life in prison without parole.
According to Florida law, Thompson will consider each aggravating factor found by the jury and all mitigating circ*mstances. He can impose a sentence of death only if the jury unanimously found at least one aggravating factor beyond a reasonable doubt.
Sentencing was initially scheduled for July 23 but a defense motion for a delay over scheduling conflicts for expert mental health witnesses was granted and sentencing delayed.
Here’s what to know about Wade Wilson’s crimes, trial, upcoming sentencing and Florida’s death row:
What crimes did Wade Wilson commit?
Wilson, then 25, met Kristine Melton, 35, and her friend Stephanie Sailors on Oct. 7, 2019, at Buddah LIVE, a Fort Myers bar.
After the bar closed, Wilson and the two women went to the home of Jayson Shepard where they stayed for several hours before leaving in the morning.
Wilson, Melton and Sailors then went Melton’s Cape Coral home. After Sailors left, Wilson strangled Melton to death as she slept in her bed and stole her car.
A short time later, Wilson saw 43-year-old Diane Ruiz walking along a Cape Coral street, asked her for directions to a nearby school and lured her into the car.
When Ruiz tried to exit the car, Wilson attacked her, beating and strangling her before pushing her out of the car and running her over 10 to 20 times.
After the murders, Wilson called his biological father Steven Testasecca several times confessing to and narrating the gruesome details of his crimes.
Wade Wilson victims Kristine Melton and Diane Ruiz
Kristine Melton, 35, of Cape Coral, was murdered Oct. 7, 2019, by Wade Wilson, 30.
Kristine Melton grew up in Illinois and moved with a friend to Cape Coral where she worked as a waitress.
She reportedly was godmother to her cousin Samantha Catomer’s child, owned a cat and lived in a Cape Coral duplex.
Melton loved to dress up and her favorite holiday was Halloween, Catomer testified during Wilson’s trial.
Melton had a quick wit, made everyone around her feel safe and understood and “was precious, not just to me, but to everyone who knew her,” Catomer said.
Melton was 35 years old when she met Wilson at Buddah LIVE, a Fort Myers bar. After leaving the bar and spending several hours at the home of Jayson Shepard, Melton, Sailors and Wilson went to Melton’s duplex.
After Sailors left, Wilson strangled her to death in her sleep.
Diane Ruiz’s body was found in a field in Cape Coral on Oct. 10, 2019, 4 days after she was reported missing.
Diane Ruiz, 43, a mother and engaged to be married, was described as caring and hardworking.
She worked as a bartender at the Moose Lodge in Cape Coral and never missed a shift in 5 years.
Ruiz was walking to work for her 10 a.m. shift when she encountered Wilson.
A short time after killing Melton, Wilson saw Ruiz walking along a Cape Coral street and lured her into the car after asking her for directions.
When she tried to leave, Wilson beat and strangled Ruiz, pushed her out of the car and ran her over repeatedly.
Her body was found in a field 3 days later.
Wade Wilson’s father Steven Testasecca was key to his arrest
After the murders, Wilson called his biological father, Steven Testasecca, several times confessing to the crimes in gruesome detail.
“I am a killer,” Wilson said, according to Testasecca’s testimony.
Testasecca said Wilson confessed to choking Melton after she went to sleep and stopping Ruiz for directions before she got into the car, choking her while he drove.
According to Testasecca’s testimony, Wilson said Ruiz was still breathing before he repeatedly ran her over.
After initially dismissing the calls and attributing the admissions to Wilson being a “good storyteller,” Testasecca, 46, put his phone on speaker with Wilson’s biological mother listening in and relaying information to police.
Testasecca asked Wilson for his location and told him he would send an Uber to him. Instead, his whereabouts were provided to police who arrested Wilson on Oct. 8, 2019.
What criminal charges was Wade Wilson convicted of?
Wilson, who shares his name with Marvel character Deadpool, was tried and found guilty of 6 charges:
2 counts of 1st-degree murder
1st-degree murder
Grand theft
Battery
Burglary
Petty theft
Wilson also faces charges in unrelated crimes, including attempted escape from jail and drug charges.
Wade Wilson, cellmate Joseph Katz accused of escape attempt
Wilson racked up additional charges while awaiting his murder trial in the Lee County Jail.
In 2020, Wilson and his cellmate Joseph Katz were accused of tampering with a window in their cell in an attempt to escape.
Deputies searched the 10×10 cell Wilson and his cellmate were housed in and found the window tampered with. The metal frame holding the window had been removed and there were several cracks in the thick security glass.
Wilson, who was reportedly the primary planner and instigator of the escape effort, also tried to set up a getaway car.
Wade Wilson tied to white supremacy prison gang Unforgiven
Court records in the attempted escape case connect Wilson to the Unforgiven, a white supremacy prison gang.
Wilson sports several swastika tattoos, including on the right side of his head and below his right eye.
The swastika was adopted in 1920 as the symbol of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, and since 1945 has “served as the most significant and notorious of hate symbols, anti-Semitism and white supremacy,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Unforgiven gang was founded in the Florida prison system in 1986 and is the largest white supremacist prison gang in the state.
Wade Wilson tattoos, before and after arrest
Wilson’s facial tattoos have gained widespread attention, including on social media.
While Wilson had neck tattoos at the time of his arrest in 2019, none were visible on his face in his booking photo and early court appearances.
At his 2024 murder trial, Wilson’s face was covered in tattoos, including a swastika below his right eye and stitches around his mouth.
Prior to the trial, Wilson’s attorneys were granted motions requesting he be allowed to wear street clothes and to cover tattoos “that might be objectionable to members of the potential jury pool” with makeup.
Wade Wilson sentencing
On June 25, 2024, the jury in Wilson’s trial recommended he receive the death penalty for each of the murders.
During the penalty phase of the trial, jurors had the option of recommending life in prison without parole or death.
Florida juries were required to vote unanimously for a death sentence recommendation until April 2023 when Gov. Ron DeSantis lowered the threshold by signing into law a bill allowing juries to recommend death with as few as 8 votes.
After considering aggravating and mitigating circ*mstances, the jury voted 9-3 and 10-2 for death.
Sentencing, originally scheduled for July 23, was delayed to August 27, 2024, and it will be up to Judge Thompson to decide whether death or life without parole sentences are imposed.
Where is Wade Wilson being held?
Wilson is housed at the Lee County Jail in Fort Myers. Once his sentencing and other unrelated charges, including an escape attempt, are resolved, he’ll be transferred into the Florida prison system.
If Judge Nicholas Thompson confirms Wilson’s death sentence, he will end up on Florida’s death row at Union Correctional Institution in a cell measuring 6x9x9.5 feet high.
Where is Florida death row?
Florida’s death row is inside Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, about 45 miles southwest of Jacksonville.
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, inmates on death row are allowed snacks, radios and 13” TVs, but do not have cable or air-conditioning. They wear orange T-shirts to set them apart from other inmates and the same blue pants worn by regular prisoners.
Death row inmates are served 3 meals a day – at 5 a.m., from 10:30 to 11 a.m. and from 4 to 4:30 p.m.. Food is prepared by prison staff and transported in insulated carts to the cells, where inmates are given sporks to eat from the provided trays.
They’re allowed showers every other day and any visitors must be preapproved. Inmates can receive mail.
Death row inmates are counted at least hourly. They wear handcuffs everywhere except in their cells, the exercise yard and shower. They are in their cells except for medical reasons, exercise, social or legal visits or media interviews.
Once a death warrant is signed by the governor, the inmate is put in a Death Watch cell and allowed a legal and social phone call.
A Death Watch cell is 12x7x8.5 feet high.
What are Florida’s methods of execution?
In 1923, the Legislature passed a law replacing hanging with the electric chair. An oak chair was built by prison inmates in that year.
Florida’s current 3-legged electric chair, nicknamed “Old Sparky,” was built of oak by Florida Department of Corrections staff and installed at Union Correctional Institution in 1999.
Legislation passed in 2000 allows for lethal injection as an alternative to the electric chair.
(source: Fort Myers News-Press)
Jury recommends death sentence for convicted Jacksonville triple murderer 20+ years after crimes—-Pinkney ‘Chip’ Carter was originally sentenced to death in 2002 murder of his ex-fiancée, her new boyfriend and her 16-year-old daughter
On his 70th, a jury on Thursday recommended Pinkney “Chip” Carter be resentenced to death for murdering 3 people more than 20 years ago.
The jury had been tasked with deciding whether Carter would spend the rest of his life in prison or be executed for the 2002 murder of his ex-fiancée, her new boyfriend and her 16-year-old daughter.
Carter, who was previously sentenced to death, was granted a resentencing trial after a 2017 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court prompted the Florida Legislature to change how the death penalty could be applied, requiring a death sentence be a unanimous decision by a jury and not just a majority, as it had been at the time of Carter’s conviction.
The Legislature changed the law again in 2023, requiring an 8-4 majority, but Carter’s case fell under the previous ruling, so his resentencing trial moved forward.
The jury’s decision Thursday was not unanimous. On 1 of the murder counts, 10 jurors recommended death with 2 recommended life in prison. On another count, 9 jurors recommended death and 3 recommended life in prison.
Below is a look back at how the resentencing trial unfolded over the last 2 weeks.
Wednesday testimony
“It felt safe in that home,” prosecutor Bernie De La Rionda explained as he delivered closing arguments Wednesday afternoon to jurors, describing what it was like for the four children who were sleeping inside their mother’s home early in the morning July 24, 2002. They were 16-year-old Courtney Smith, 14-year-old Rick Smith, 8-year-old Rebecca Reed and 6-year-old Bryan Smith.
“At approximately 12:30 a.m. the world as they knew it would be shattered,” he said about the moments Chip Carter entered their home and shot and killed their mother, Reed, her boyfriend, Glenn Pafford and Reed’s daughter, Smith.
“I’m asking you to go back in time and think about what this man did,” said De La Rionda as he detailed what he argues is proof that the murders were cold, calculated and premeditated murder.
De La Rionda reminded jurors about a neighbor of Reed’s who found Carter one night before the murders in his backyard, trying to peak into Reed’s home.
“He was trying to figure out how he could surprise them,” he said.
Carter knew Reed, who was his ex-fiancee, was dating someone new.
He still loved her and testified in 2005 that he went to her home that night with a loaded rifle, “to get some answers.”
He said he accidentally shot 16-year-old Courtney during a struggle with Reed, but De La Rionda contends that does not make sense, telling jurors unless it was a “magical” bullet, how would a bullet hit Courtney in the head, if the rifle was pointing down as Carter demonstrated about the struggle for the rifle.
“He was obsessed with her,” said De La Rionda about Carter’s feelings for Reed. “He was jealous, and he thinks he’s been played and that he had the right to go over there and get some answers,” he said, asking jurors to use common sense when deciding if Carter should return to death row or be sentenced instead to life in prison.
“The law says you can use that God-given common sense to evaluate the evidence,” he said.
Defense attorneys for a Jacksonville man convicted in a 2002 triple murder called witnesses Wednesday as they tried to convince jurors to sentence Pinkney “Chip” Carter to life in prison instead of sending him back to death row.
His convictions are not in question but because of changes to Florida law, Carter was granted a resentencing trial because the recommendation for the death penalty from his original jury was not unanimous.
Carter’s attorneys are trying to convince jurors that the combination of medication and alcohol Carter had the day of the murder and his troubled childhood should warrant a life sentence, not a death sentence.
Tuesday testimony
Chip Carter’s father was described as a “monster” by his former step-daughters in Duval County court Tuesday morning.
“He was very abusive to my mother,” Jill Larkin said about P.W. Carter. Larkin’s mother married P.W. Carter after he divorced Chip Carter’s mother.
“We lived in fear, in great fear,” described Larkin about the 6 years she and her 7 other siblings endured at the hands of P.W. Carter. “He got mad at my sister one time and he took off his belt and started beating her. She was on the floor bleeding and we were yelling and screaming.”
Carter did not live with his step-siblings during the abuse. But his brother and sister testified their father was violent.
Defense attorneys also called an expert in pharmacology and toxicology, who testified about how the combination of anti-depressant medication, Prozac, and alcohol can impact the human brain.
Carter testified during his 2005 trial that he had taken 2 anti-depressant pills and drank 4-5 alcoholic beverages within a few hours of confronting Reed and Pafford at Reed’s home in 2002. He testified that night he “was having thoughts I had never had before, I was confused, it was chaos.”
His testimony was read to jurors last week.
Pharmacologist Dr. Daniel Buffington, testified a combination of Prozac and alcohol can, “enhance the adverse side effects of both substances.”
Carter testified during his 1st-degree murder trial in 2005, that he went to Reed’s home to confront her about dating him and Pafford at the same time. He said during a struggle with Reed over the loaded rifle he brought with him to her home, “to get answers,” that he accidentally shot her teenaged daughter and then shot Reed as she went to help her child.
He then shot and killed Pafford. All 3 were shot in the head.
Prosecutors argue Carter had no trouble driving to Reed’s home that night despite having taken Prozac and drinking, and that he didn’t miss a single shot of the 6 he fired.
The murders sent shock waves through the entire community at that time 22 years ago. Pafford was a long-time, beloved manager at a local Publix store, Reed worked at the same store along with her 2 oldest children.
Monday testimony
Carter’s sister, Cindy Starling, testified for more than an hour Monday morning about her brother’s childhood. Marred by poverty and an absent father, Starling said, she, Carter and their 2 older brothers were raised by a single mother who struggled to provide financially for the children.
“We ate saltines that had been heated with butter on top, as a snack,” she told jurors.
She said their father lived with another woman and never provided any financial support to his children.
“He was physically violent with my brothers,” she explained during questioning by defense attorney Alan Chipperfield. She said her mother was so overwhelmed, and she tried to take her own life.
Starling’s son, Jacob Slotin, also testified Monday about his uncle’s arrest and conviction more than 2 decades ago.
“Absolute devastation to the family,” he described upon learning as a teenager that Carter had been arrested for murder.
Slotin said he visited Reed and her family often as a young child. He said he and Smith’s brother, Rick, were close. They vacationed together and Slotin remembers spending the night at Reed’s home, the same home where Reed, Smith and Pafford were killed.
“I love my uncle. I’m still upset about what happened. I love him very much, that doesn’t go away,” Slotin testified when asked what impact the murders and Carter’s death sentence have had on his life.
Last week
The resentencing trial started last week with emotional and gut-wrenching testimony from the family of the victims.
Rick Smith choked back tears on Thursday describing hearing what sounded like loud “slapping” noises coming from the living room where he had left his mother, Liz Reed, and Pafford.
His 16-year-old sister, Courtney Smith, ran out into the living room when she heard arguing.
Rick, then just 14 years old, emerged from his bedroom when he heard screaming and found his sister, mother and Pafford shot and dying.
His 8-year-old sister Rebecca and 6-year-old brother Bryan were sleeping in a back bedroom and were not physically injured.
Reed, Smith and Pafford all died in the shooting.
Chip Carter testimony
“I wasn’t angry, I was hurt,” said Chip Carter in 2005 when he testified during his triple murder trial. When asked why he went to his ex-fiancée’s house with a loaded rifle in his hand, he said, “I was upset about the whole relationship; I wanted to get back with her.”
Those words and the rest of Carter’s testimony nearly 20 years ago were read aloud in court Friday morning.
Carter sat quietly, listening as his testimony was read. Jurors heard him tell prosecutor Bernie De La Rionda why he went to Reed’s home shortly after midnight on July 24, 2002.
“I’m not leaving until you give me some answers,” he said he told the mother of four. “She didn’t show up for the date. I was upset. I was confused. I wanted some answers.”
Carter said the 2 were supposed to meet earlier in the evening, but Reed did not show up. Instead, Carter drove by her house and spotted her new boyfriend’s truck in the driveway.
Pafford, who was dating Reed, was just leaving her home when Carter walked up. It was dark and neither Reed nor Pafford saw the rifle Carter had concealed behind his leg. All 3 went inside.
Carter said he confronted Reed about why she was seeing him and dating Pafford at the same time. Reed then saw the rifle in his hand. He said she, “grabbed the gun and tried to pull it from me” and it went off.
A bullet hit Smith in the head. As Reed rushed to her daughter’s side, Carter admitted to shooting her twice in the head.
“I don’t know why I did it,” he testified in 2005. “I just lost it, is all I can tell you.”
Smith died 2 days after the shooting.
“Before you got into the house did you plan to kill anyone?” asked attorney Alan Chipperfield during the 2005 trial.
“No,” responded Carter.
“When you got inside the house did you have plans to kill anyone?” asked Chipperfield.
“No,” said Carter.
Carter described himself as an “excellent shot.”
How we got here
Carter was granted a resentencing trial after a 2017 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court prompted the Florida Legislature to change how the death penalty could be applied, requiring a death sentence be a unanimous decision by a jury and not just a majority, as it had been at the time of Carter’s conviction.
(NOTE: The Legislature changed the law again in 2023, requiring an 8-4 majority, but Carter’s case fell under the previous ruling, so his resentencing trial is moving forward.)
Carter’s attorneys insisted during opening statements Thursday morning that Carter will never get out of prison and should be allowed to die of natural causes in prison, and not be sentenced to death.
News4JAX has been following the case for 22 years, including finding the fugitive Carter locked up in Reynosa, Mexico, and trying to interview him there. He hid from our camera.
The case was profiled in People Magazine, and Carter was even featured on America’s Most Wanted. He paid off his jailers in Mexico, but was eventually caught by state police in Kentucky and returned to Jacksonville to face trial.
Carter was convicted in 2005 of 1st-degree murder. The same jury that found him guilty also recommended he be sentenced to death, and a judge upheld that recommendation.
Now a new jury must decide if that is still to be his fate.
No chance
During opening statements, prosecutors said the 3 victims never had a chance.
Smith was shot in the head with one bullet. She died 2 days later at the hospital.
Reed had 2 gunshot wounds to her head. She died in the living room.
Pafford, who was the store manager at the grocery store where Reed and her 2 oldest children worked, had 3 gunshot wounds to the head. One of them was fired at point-blank range after he had fallen to the floor.
After Rick Smith’s testimony Thursday, prosecutors called the 1st police officer who arrived on the scene to the stand. They also presented the testimony of the medical examiner who testified during Carter’s murder trial in 2005 and questioned the lead detective who investigated the triple murder case in 2002.
Assistant Chief Chuck Ford described where and how he found the rifle Carter used to commit the murder. It was discovered at the bottom of the Rio Grande River at the border of Texas and Mexico.
The crime
Carter had dated Liz Reed for 4 years, the 2 lived together on and off during that time with her 4 children. They had been engaged to be married, but Liz broke it off.
Carter’s crimes sent shockwaves through the quiet Arlington neighborhood where Reed lived. 3 dead, including a teenager, was not a common occurrence in Jacksonville at the time.
Now the victims’ families must relive the horrors of that day as a new jury weighs whether their loved ones’ killer should spend his life in prison or return to death ow.
(source: news4jax.com)
ALABAMA:
Alabama is getting ready to carry out its 2nd execution by nitrogen suffocation.
Call to Action
Alan Miller is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen suffocation on September 26. Thousands are now demanding that corporations stop supplying the necessary equipment. We have already garnered over 4,000 petition signatures demanding that Allegro Industries not provide the gas masks used to administer the lethal nitrogen. Alongside local faith leaders in South Carolina, we delivered these petitions to Allegro’s headquarters. In response to this peaceful action, Allegro executives called the police. Help us punch back and send 10,000 more petitions.
See: https://worthrises.org/gasexecutions?mc_cid=8015460008&mc_eid=569aa9ffb0
Earlier this year, on January 25, the state of Alabama carried out the nation’s 1st state-sanctioned execution by nitrogen suffocation to end the life of Kenneth Eugene Smith. It delivered on the torture that many feared and garnered international attention, including a condemnation from the United Nations as a human rights violation.
Since then, we’ve continued our yearslong effort to shine a light on the private sector’s involvement in death-dealing and to demand corporations divest altogether. Thankfully, we are continuing to make headway. Earlier this summer, after an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver exposed Absolute Standards for supplying lethal injection drugs to the federal government, you answered our call to action and helped us secure a commitment from the corporation to stop.
We need your help again. Allegro Industries is choosing to continue profiting off of the death penalty with its silence around the use of its gas masks in Alabama for this next barbaric execution. The death penalty has no place in the United States, and corporations should not profit from it. Please help make that message loud and clear by taking action today.
TAKE ACTION NOW — see: https://worthrises.org/gasexecutions?mc_cid=8015460008&mc_eid=569aa9ffb0
With Gratitude,
The Worth Rises Team
(source: PHADP)
Lawyers for Alabama inmate seek to block his fall execution by nitrogen gas
Lawyers for an Alabama inmate, scheduled to be executed with nitrogen gas this fall, argued in a Tuesday court filing that the state has ignored problems with the method as it seeks to carry out more nitrogen executions.
Attorneys for Carey Dale Grayson asked a federal judge to block the state from using the same nitrogen protocol that Alabama used in January to execute Kenneth Smith. The court filing cited witness descriptions of the execution and the findings of an autopsy conducted on Smith.
Alabama, after becoming the 1st state to carry out a nitrogen execution, has scheduled 2 additional executions with the new method. A 2nd execution via nitrogen gas is set for Sept. 26 for Alan Eugene Miller. Grayson is scheduled to be executed Nov. 21.
“Rather than investigating what went wrong — as other states have done following issues with executions. Defendants have chosen to ignore clear and obvious signs the current protocol contains major problems that will result in more unconstitutionally torturous executions if it continues to be employed,” attorneys for Grayson wrote in the Tuesday night court filing.
The Alabama attorney general’s office declined to comment Wednesday on the court filing but has maintained that the method is constitutional. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall previously described the execution as “textbook.” The state will file a response later to the request for a preliminary injunction.
Smith had blood and fluid in his lungs after his death, according to an autopsy conducted by the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. The state autopsy noted that his lungs when cut showed “marked congestion and edema with dark maroon blood.” It also noted that the tracheobronchial tree contained a “small amount of frothy fluid.”
An expert hired by Grayson’s legal team to review the autopsy wrote that the finding is “highly concerning.”
Dr. Brian McAlary, an anesthesiologist, wrote that it was the result of negative pressure pulmonary edema which occurs when drawing a breath is attempted against an upper airway obstruction, leading to fluid being drawn from blood vessels. He said it can also occur after strangulation or smothering with a plastic bag. He also wrote that the lack of a sedative given ahead of nitrogen gas increases the likelihood that the person will panic.
“Mr. Smith’s autopsy demonstrates what happens to the body when this panic response occurs. An individual experiencing panic and the sensation of the inability to breathe while also being denied oxygen will experience a constricted airway similar to an upper airway obstruction,” McAlary wrote.
Dr. Thomas Andrew, who retired after two decades as the chief medical examiner of New Hampshire, told The Associated Press that lung congestion is consistent with asphyxia as the mechanism of death. He said as the heart rapidly fails, “blood backs up and the lungs become quite congested.”
Andrew said he thought it was possibly a “bridge too far” to conclude there was an airway obstruction. However, he did agree that the lack of sedation could cause a person to panic.
“I think that’s a critical critique of the protocols used in this form of execution… You certainly will have a sense of the absence of oxygen, air hunger, and all of the panic and discomfort that is part and parcel of that way of dying,” Andrew said.
Alabama in 2018 authorized nitrogen gas as a new execution method. Grayson in 2018 selected it as his execution method but at the time the state had not developed a process for using it to carry out an execution.
Grayson was 1 of 4 teenagers convicted in the 1994 killing of 37-year-old Vickie Deblieux in Jefferson County. Prosecutors said Deblieux was hitchhiking from Tennessee to her mother’s home in Louisiana when 4 teenagers, including Grayson, offered her a ride. Prosecutors said they took her to a wooded area, attacked and beat her and threw her off a cliff. The teens later mutilated her body, prosecutors said.
Grayson is the only 1 of the 4 facing the death penalty because he was 19 at the time of the crime.
(source: Associated Press)
TENNESSEE:
Attorney: Oak Ridge man sent to death row may die of natural causes before execution—-Sean Finnegan, 56, was sentenced to death this week for the 2019 rape, torture and killing of Jennifer Paxton.
Sean Finnegan, from Anderson County, was sentenced this week to death for the 2019 torture, rape and killing of Jennifer Paxton, but he could die of natural causes before ever getting executed.
Legal Aid of East Tennessee attorney Darrell Winfree said there are several factors surrounding death penalty cases that lead to a long legal process, and ultimately, to someone dying on death row.
Finnegan is 56 years old and Winfree said people can spend decades appealing their death sentences.
“The first thing that happens is there’s an automatic appeal that’s filed with the Supreme Court of the state of Tennessee,” Winfree said. “And they look at some pretty specific things, they look at whether the sentence was imposed arbitrarily, they look at whether the aggravating factors were met, and they are supposed to make sure everything was done correctly from that perspective.”
After that, Winfree said the state’s Supreme Court is able to either affirm the sentence of death, or modify it, and change it to life in prison.
Winfree said after that’s done, a convict can appeal at the trial court level, but that appeal must focus on things that happened in the trial, outside of the specific circ*mstances of the trial.
“So that’s when you get into things like ineffective assistance of counsel, or newly discovered evidence, things of that nature,” he said.
The case can then go to the Criminal Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the state of Tennessee, Winfree said.
“Throughout both of these steps, at the end of them, whichever side loses is able to take the case to the Supreme Court of the United States,” Winfree said. “Which is something that kind of slows things down, somewhat.”
Winfree said after that, people can appeal to federal courts, based on habeas corpus.
The appeals process can take decades, Winfree said, adding that healthcare on death row isn’t as good as it is in the outside world, which can also contribute to people dying of natural causes while waiting to be executed.
“It seems like it would be very easy to bring someone’s life to end,” Winfree said. “But it is a very extended process, a very expensive process, and a very complicated process.”
There are currently 45 people on Tennessee’s death row and the last time someone was sentenced to death, before Finnegan, was in 2021. There are 13 people on death row from East Tennessee, and the oldest person who’s waiting to be executed is 74 years old.
Larry McKay, of Shelby County, has been on death row the longest. State records show he was sentenced in 1983, but hasn’t been executed. McKay was convicted of two murders during a robbery in Memphis, that police said happened in the early 1980s.
Governor Bill Lee paused executions in Tennessee in 2022, citing issues with the lethal injection process. The Tennessee Department of Correction said that there’s no timeline on when executions would resume, and because of that, there’s no way to tell which death row inmate would be the next to be executed.
Death row inmates who were sentenced before 1999 have the option of taking the lethal injection or the electric chair, per Tennessee law.
A Sevier County man sent to death row by a Blount County jury in 1996 could be up next to die once executions resume. Gary Sutton and his uncle, James Dellinger, were convicted of killing Sevier County siblings Connie Branam and Tommy Griffin in 1992.
Dellinger and Sutton were sentenced to death, but Dellinger died of natural causes on death row in 2023.
Sutton maintains his innocence in his case, and his loved ones have hired a private investigator who said she has found evidence that proves Sutton didn’t kill anyone. Sutton’s loved ones are asking for him to be exonerated and for Lee to meet with them about his case. He hasn’t responded to that request.
Blount County District Attorney General Ryan Desmond also said he’s also considering the death penalty for Kenneth Wayne DeHart Jr., from Alcoa. He is charged with shooting and killing Blount County deputy Greg McCown and shooting deputy Shelby Eggers in February.
Other East Tennesseans on death row include people from Knox and co*cke counties. Lemaricus Davidson was sentenced to death for the 2007 killings of Chris Newsom and Channon Christian.
Terry King was sentenced to death for the 1983 killing of Diana Kay Smith. Christa Pike, the only woman on death row in Tennessee, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Dennis Suttles was convicted in 1996 of killing Patricia Gail Rhodes, in the parking lot of a South Knoxville Taco Bell.
Jonathan Stephenson was convicted of hiring a hitman to kill his wife, Lisa, who was shot in the head with a high-powered rifle in co*cke County in 1989.
Oscar Smith was convicted in 1989 in the triple slayings of his estranged wife, Judy Lynn Smith, and her 2 sons, Chad and Jason Burnett, from a previous marriage in Nashville. He was just hours away from having his death sentence carried out 2 years ago before Lee abruptly intervened.
In April 2022, the governor halted all executions in Tennessee after launching an independent review of the state’s lethal injection preparation process following an unspecified “oversight” discovered just before Smith’s scheduled execution. The review finished in December 2022, and the Associated Press reported the Tennessee Department of Correction then fired its top attorney and inspector general for “incorrectly testifying” under oath that they were testing the lethal injection chemicals for bacterial contamination.
The independent report found Tennessee had never fully tested drugs for its executions since rewriting the state’s lethal injection protocol in 2018, according to the Associated Press.
Executions have not resumed in Tennessee since the investigation, however. Lee noted he did not wish to stop the administration of the death penalty altogether.
Tennessee has a secondary method of carrying out executions — the electric chair — and several death row inmates were put to death by that method between 2018 and 2020. However, the electric chair can’t be used as a primary means of execution and can only be used if inmates waive the right to lethal injection.
(source: WBIR news)
MISSOURI—-impending execution
Attorney Statement: Missouri Supreme Court Blocks Agreement Between Prosecutor and Marcellus Williams to Prevent Execution—-A new evidentiary hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 28.
Yesterday, Marcellus Williams, an innocent man scheduled to be executed in Missouri on September 24, entered an Alford plea in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. This resolution would have ensured that Mr. Williams is not executed for a crime he did not commit. Today, however, the Missouri Supreme Court granted Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s writ application and blocked the St. Louis County Circuit Court from resentencing Mr. Williams to life without parole (see Preliminary Writ here, at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qhrffnVLrqb2ug13pqN14j_cHMNZx_OS/view)
Mr. Williams has always maintained his innocence in the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle. No physical or forensic evidence has ever linked Mr. Williams to the crime, and his conviction was based on the incentivized testimony of two unreliable witnesses.
Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell had moved to vacate Mr. Williams’ conviction after new DNA testing excluded him as the source of male DNA on the murder weapon. A hearing on this motion was scheduled for August 21, but after the parties learned that the prosecutor’s office had mishandled the knife, corrupting the DNA evidence, they reached an agreement to ensure that Mr. Williams is not executed as he continues to seek additional evidence of his innocence
Despite the fact that Ms. Gayle’s family does not support the death penalty in this case, Attorney General Bailey has vigorously opposed the motion to vacate and has pressed to execute Mr. Williams. After the circuit court accepted Mr. Williams’ Alford plea yesterday, AG Bailey filed a writ application to the Missouri Supreme Court, resulting in today’s decision.
Hon. Bruce F. Hilton of the St. Louis County Circuit Court has scheduled a new evidentiary hearing for Wednesday, August 28 (see Order here, at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wXO91WzQHZJ2wxvnb_B_iNHVv1q_Qccz/view).
Below is a statement from Tricia Rojo Bushnell, an attorney for Marcellus Williams:
“After careful consideration of the applicable law and facts, the circuit court accepted the consent judgment overturning Marcellus Williams’ conviction in exchange for Mr. William’s Alford plea and a subsequent sentence to life without parole. This agreement was made with the support of the very office that prosecuted Mr. Williams and secured his death sentence—and who now concedes constitutional error, and with the support of the victim’s family.
“Yet in spite of this, the Attorney General has fought to invalidate that agreement. It is impossible to understand who this decision serves or what justice it provides. This decision directly contradicts the will of a duly elected prosecutor and the community he represents and the wishes of a family who has already lost so much. That is not justice.
“We look forward to presenting the evidence that supports the circuit court’s decision at the hearing next week.”
Tricia Rojo Bushnell, attorney for Marcellus Williams
A Prosecutor Admits His Office’s Incompetence Cut Off an Innocent Man’s Path to Exoneration—-A Missouri prosecutor was set to argue that Marcellus Williams had been wrongly convicted. New evidence that prosecutors had mishandled the murder weapon got in the way.
Matthew Jacober stood to address the judge inside the small, packed courtroom on the third floor of the St. Louis County Courthouse in Clayton, Missouri. Jacober, a special counsel representing the county’s elected prosecutor, had a confession to make: The knife used to kill Felicia Anne Gayle Picus inside her home in August 1998 had been contaminated by the prosecution team that had tried Marcellus Williams for her murder.
Because prosecutors had mishandled and improperly stored the weapon, Jacober said, county prosecutor Wesley Bell had concluded that Williams’s rights had been violated. His conviction — and death sentence — could not stand. “The murder weapon was handled without the proper procedures then in place,” Jacober told Judge Bruce Hilton. “The St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office regrets its failure to maintain proper protocols surrounding key physical evidence in this heinous crime.”
It was a stunning admission on the day that Jacober had been slated to present the state’s case that Williams had been wrongly convicted of killing Picus. The fact that the state had so tragically mishandled the murder weapon, which had traces of unknown male DNA, meant that a key piece of evidence that would support Williams’s exoneration was no longer usable.
It was a bitter pill. The judge overseeing Williams’s 2001 trial had denied his request for DNA testing. It wasn’t until 2016 that testing ordered by the Missouri Supreme Court excluded Williams as the source of DNA found on the knife. In other words, he could not be linked to the weapon. Now, Jacober admitted, a new round of testing revealed that a prosecutor’s investigator could not be excluded as the source. Nor could the prosecutor who handled Williams’s trial. Whatever DNA evidence there was connecting the perpetrator to the murder had been irretrievably lost.
While Jacober conceded that Williams’s conviction could not stand, neither could the office point to the unknown DNA on the murder weapon to exonerate him. Instead, after hours negotiating behind closed doors with Williams’s attorneys as spectators waited in the courtroom, the county prosecutors offered Williams a deal: agree to a plea that would take the specter of execution off the table, replaced by a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Williams would have to accept the arrangement to avoid being executed for a crime he insists he did not commit. Wearing a silvery gray thobe and white skull cap, his beard flecked with white, the 55-year-old Williams was still as Jacober spoke. The judge asked Williams if he had agreed to the terms. “Yes,” he said.
Hilton said he agreed with the outcome, as did Picus’s husband, Dan Picus. The judge would formally re-sentence Williams to life in prison the following day.
Everyone, it seemed, was on the same page. Everyone, that is, except Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. By Wednesday night, his office had successfully appealed to the state’s Supreme Court to block the deal. But Bell’s office was determined not to let Bailey have the final word.
“Inexorable Doubt”
Dan Picus came home from work on August 11, 1998, to find his wife dead. The former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter had been stabbed repeatedly and the murder weapon, a knife from the couple’s kitchen, had been left lodged in her neck. Additionally, there were hairs found near Picus’s body, bloody fingerprints on a wall, and a trail of bloody shoeprints. Despite the wealth of physical evidence, the investigation stalled. It wasn’t until months later, after Picus’s family posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer, that a jailhouse informant came forward claiming his former cellmate, Marcellus Williams, had confessed to the murder. Police later secured a second informant, a former girlfriend of Williams’s, who also claimed he’d taken responsibility.
Notably, none of the physical evidence at the scene tied Williams to the killing. And there was good reason to question the accounts provided by the informants; both were facing prison time for unrelated crimes, and each had a history of ratting out others to save themselves from trouble. Many of the details they offered police shifted over time, while others did not match the murder. Nonetheless, Williams was tried and sentenced to death.
Each of Williams’s appeals were denied. He was on the eve of execution in January 2015 when the Missouri Supreme Court stepped in and ordered DNA testing on the murder weapon, which ultimately revealed unknown DNA. The court summarily dismissed Williams’s claims without considering those results and reset his execution for August 2017.
The Midwest Innocence Project, which represents Williams, turned to Missouri’s then-Gov. Eric Greitens, asking him to halt the execution and to convene what’s known as a board of inquiry to investigate the case. On the day Williams was set to die, Greitens issued an executive order convening a five-member board of retired judges to “assess the credibility and weight of all the evidence” in the case. The board was given subpoena power and, per state law, tasked with reporting back to the governor whether or not Williams should be executed or his sentence commuted.
That process was ongoing when the current governor, Mike Parson, issued his own executive order in June 2023, disbanding the board. It was time to “move forward,” he said. The Midwest Innocence Project sued, arguing that Parson had overstepped his authority by dissolving the panel before it had issued a report as the statute required it to do. The Missouri Supreme Court disagreed, ruling in June 2024 that Parson could do as he wished. The court reset Williams’s execution for September 24.
Meanwhile, the county court was considering a motion that Bell filed in January, seeking to vacate Williams’s conviction. In addition to the foreign DNA on the knife and the sketchiness of the snitch testimony, Bell cited poor defense lawyering at Williams’s trial and misconduct by prosecutors who struck qualified individuals from the jury pool because they were Black. These factors combined cast “inexorable doubt on Mr. Williams’s conviction and sentence,” the prosecutor argued.
Fast forward to this week: A court was finally slated to consider evidence of Williams’s innocence.
An Unexpected Twist
The rows of wooden benches inside the Division 13 courtroom were full by 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, when the hearing was slated to begin. Forty-five minutes later, Hilton stepped into the room without his robes. He was there to explain the delay. The parties were talking, he said, discussing a way to “resolve” the case. Hilton joked that he wanted everyone to know they weren’t waiting around because the judge was late.
It wasn’t until after 1 p.m. that Hilton finally took to the bench and announced that Bell’s office and Williams’s lawyers had come to an agreement. There would be no hearing as had been planned. Instead, Jacober, the special prosecutor, admitted that the state had so mishandled the murder weapon that the physical evidence was no longer probative of Williams’s innocence — or of anyone else’s guilt.
While the state’s incompetence had violated Williams’s rights — prompting the prosecutors to say his current conviction and death sentence couldn’t stand — it also cut off the most tangible path to his exoneration.
Without the DNA evidence, what remains of the case against Williams is the questionable testimony of 2 snitches, who have both since died. Williams had previously raised the issue of their dubious credibility but was dismissed by the courts. The same is true of his claims about his defense lawyers’ failures at trial and about the prosecution’s striking of Black people from the jury pool. At each turn the courts have shrugged their shoulders. Still, Jacober indicated that Bell’s efforts to make a case for Williams’s innocence were hamstrung without the exculpatory DNA.
Jacober announced that the prosecutors’ office would admit that it had bungled the job and take the death penalty off the table. In exchange, Williams would enter what is known as an Alford plea, accepting a charge of first-degree murder.
Named for the U.S. Supreme Court case North Carolina v. Alford, it is a plea where a defendant maintains their innocence but agrees that the state has enough to convict them and thus pleads guilty to avoid a harsher sentence — in Williams’s case (as in Alford’s), the death penalty.
As part of the deal, Williams would have the right to appeal his sentence if new evidence of his innocence comes to light.
“Marcellus Williams is an innocent man, and nothing about today’s plea agreement changes that fact,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Williams’s lawyer and executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, said in a statement. “The fact that there is DNA on the knife matching members of the trial prosecution team proves the State of Missouri disregarded critical protocols in the investigation of this case, including mishandling pivotal evidence.”
“That Is Not Justice”
During the hours of negotiations on Wednesday morning, Hilton had spoken to Dan Picus, who affirmed that he does not support the death penalty for Williams. Picus would be in court the following morning to testify at the sentencing hearing, the judge said.
Lawyers with the attorney general’s office were displeased. Andrew Clarke, an assistant attorney general, lodged an objection to the agreement, which Hilton overruled. Bailey, Missouri’s attorney general, then appealed to the state’s high court to intervene.
Since being appointed to his post in 2023, Bailey has spent a considerable amount of time attempting to thwart state courts from exonerating the wrongly convicted — or even from considering their claims. Bailey sought to block Williams from ever receiving a hearing, arguing to the state Supreme Court that, by granting a hearing, Hilton was challenging its authority as the highest court in the state. Last month, the court denied Bailey’s motion to scuttle the hearing and clear the way for Williams’s execution.
In a Wednesday evening court filing, the attorney general’s office again argued to the state’s high court that Hilton had overstepped his role by vacating Williams’s conviction and asked it to halt the planned resentencing. The court did just that, issuing an order requiring Hilton to hold the innocence hearing as planned and to issue a ruling by September 13, or to respond to the court explaining why he would not do so.
Picus joined the court session on Thursday morning via video call, but instead of attending Williams’s resentencing, he listened as Hilton responded to the high court’s order. The judge and attorneys had decided to move forward with a hearing on August 28, despite the lack of definitively exonerating DNA. Bell’s office indicated that it would seek to show, without the benefit of dispositive DNA evidence, that Williams’s case was too flawed to withstand scrutiny.
Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project said that evidence presented at next week’s hearing would affirm Hilton’s decision to accept the prosecutor’s confession that constitutional error had poisoned Williams’s case.
She also questioned the attorney general’s continued meddling, noting in a statement that the agreement to overturn Williams’s death sentence and to accept the Alford plea was made after careful consideration and with the support of Picus’s family.
“Yet in spite of this, the Attorney General has fought to invalidate that agreement. It is impossible to understand who this decision serves or what justice it provides,” she said. “This decision directly contradicts the will of a duly elected prosecutor and the community he represents, and the wishes of a family who has already lost so much. That is not justice.”
(source for both: innocenceproject.org)
Missouri Court Halts Deal to Spare Prisoner From Execution—-The State Supreme Court said the trial had to hold a hearing before accepting a deal that would give the man a sentence of life without parole.
In a suburban St. Louis courtroom on Wednesday, it appeared that Marcellus Williams would be spared execution after the local prosecutor’s office raised questions about his guilt and agreed to a prison sentence of life without parole.
Hours later, the Missouri Supreme Court halted the deal over concerns that a judge had overstepped his authority in approving the new plea and sentence.
The late-night order was the latest twist in Mr. Williams’s long-running effort to prove that he is innocent and avoid being executed. And it was the latest skirmish in a power struggle between the state attorney general and local prosecutors over who speaks for the state in wrongful conviction cases.
Mr. Williams, who is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24, was convicted of killing Felicia Gayle, a well-known newspaper reporter, in her suburban St. Louis home in 1998. Mr. Williams, 55, has always maintained his innocence, but his appeals and post-conviction pleadings were unsuccessful.
In 2021, the Missouri legislature passed a law allowing a prosecutor to challenge old convictions “if he or she has information that the convicted person may be innocent or may have been erroneously convicted.” The law, a response to advances in forensic science and a growing awareness of the factors that can contribute to wrongful convictions, says that a hearing must be held on such a motion, and it permits the attorney general to participate.
The St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, Wesley Bell, filed a 63-page motion to overturn Mr. Williams’s conviction, saying that the two main witnesses against him had not been credible and that the prosecutor had improperly excluded prospective jurors who were Black. Mr. Williams, the motion said, was not the source of bloody shoe prints, fingerprints and hair found at the crime scene, and a DNA analysis showed that DNA found on the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, was not his.
An evidentiary hearing was set for this past Wednesday. But 2 days earlier, a private lab engaged by the prosecutor issued a report based on additional analysis. The lab said it had found that DNA on the knife matched that of an investigator and a prosecutor involved in the original trial.
The finding suggested that the investigator and the prosecutor had mishandled what might have been the most important piece of evidence, leaving their own DNA and perhaps eliminating DNA that had been left by the perpetrator. The surprise finding dashed the defense team’s hope that the DNA would point to an unknown perpetrator, which would bolster Mr. Williams’s claim of innocence.
Instead, Mr. Bell’s office backed away from its motion that sought exoneration and proposed an agreement that would change Mr. Williams’s sentence from death to life without parole. The judge accepted the agreement, but the attorney general, Andrew Bailey, objected, insisting that Mr. Williams was guilty of murder in the death of Ms. Gayle.
Mr. Bailey, who has routinely tried to block exonerations, asked the State Supreme Court to intervene, saying that the judge had not held the required hearing and that he had exceeded his power in accepting the agreement without the attorney general’s assent.
Mr. Bailey has maintained that his office represents the state and that the State Supreme Court has “exclusive authority” to review death penalty cases, positions that appear to be in direct conflict with the new law.
“Because the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney has expressly challenged Mr. Williams’s conviction, he has an inherent conflict of interest that cannot be reconciled with the state’s competing interest in enforcing a lawful, repeatedly affirmed criminal judgment,” Mr. Bailey wrote in a filing to the court on Wednesday.
In its ruling, the court said that the judge, Bruce F. Hilton, had to either hold the evidentiary hearing or make an argument as to why he should not have to. On Thursday morning, Judge Hilton scheduled the hearing for Aug. 28.
In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Bell said, “We still have concerns about the integrity of the conviction of Marcellus Williams as expressed in our motion that requested this hearing, particularly given that his conviction led to the irrevocable punishment of death.”
(source: Shaila Dewan, New York Times)
Missouri Supreme Court Blocks Marcellus Williams from Entering Plea to Avoid Execution After State Reveals Mishandled Evidence
Innocence Missouri
On August 21, 2024, Marcellus Williams, who is scheduled to be executed on September 24, 2024, agreed to enter an Alford plea in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. This agreement would have ensured that Mr. Williams, who has always maintained his innocence in the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, would not be executed. But hours after Judge Bruce F. Hilton accepted the plea agreement, Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the Missouri Supreme Court to block the deal, claiming that Judge Hilton did not have the authority to resentence Mr. Williams. In response, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered the lower court to set aside the plea agreement and move forward with the scheduled evidentiary hearing. Judge Hilton has now rescheduled it for August 28, 2024.
In January 2024, Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell filed a motion to vacate Mr. Williams’ death sentence after DNA testing excluded him as the source of DNA on the murder weapon. A 2021 Missouri law allows prosecutors to challenge past convictions if they believe the individual is innocent or wrongfully convicted. Including Mr. Williams’ case, this law has been used 6 times, with varying degrees of success. AG Bailey has consistently opposed any effort by Mr. Williams to appeal his conviction and death sentence. The Missouri Attorney General’s office has a decades-long history of opposing relief in other innocence cases as well. In 2021 and 2023, respectively, Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson were exonerated despite the AG’s efforts to prevent their release.
Mr. Williams’ plea agreement was reached as both parties were scheduled to begin an evidentiary hearing on DA Bell’s motion to vacate Mr. Williams’ conviction and death sentence. In connection with the announcement of the plea deal, however, prosecutors unexpectedly announced that the murder weapon contained the DNA of members of the trial prosecution team. Consistent with his assertion of innocence, the murder weapon does not show any DNA from Mr. Williams, but now confirms that the crime scene evidence was mishandled by prosecutors. No physical or forensic evidence has ever connected Mr. Williams to the crime scene.
A new analysis of the murder weapon found that DNA present was consistent with that of an investigator and a prosecutor involved in the original trial. Matthew Jacober, with Mr. Bell’s office, told the court that the newly revealed DNA evidence, which was instrumental to Mr. Bell’s motion to vacate, “did not fully support our initial conclusions.” Mr. Jacober told the court that Mr. Bell’s office “deeply regrets its failure” to properly preserve the evidence.
Representatives of Mr. Bell’s office determined that the new DNA findings weakened Mr. Williams’ innocence claim, though the case has many other serious errors. His office proposed that Mr. Williams enter an Alford plea, which would have permitted Mr. Williams to maintain his innocence and avoid execution. After speaking with Daniel Picus, Ms. Gayle’s husband, who is opposed to executing Mr. Williams, Judge Hilton determined that the plea agreement is “a proper remedy” to the case. AG Bailey disagreement with this ruling resulted in the Missouri Supreme Court’s order resetting the evidentiary hearing. The lower court may seek a stay of execution for Mr. Williams while the lower court proceedings continue.
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
ARIZONA:
Death penalty trial begins for Mesa man accused of raping, killing teen
It was more than 10 years ago that 14-year-old girl Claudia Lucero was found strangled to death in a Mesa dumpster.
Thursday was the 1st day of the capital murder trial for Alex Madrid, the man accused of killing her.
Police said Madrid is the victim’s mom’s ex-boyfriend and they say Claudia was sexually assaulted before she was killed.
The death penalty is on the table for Madrid.
The prosecution has everything from DNA, cellphone location data, and physical evidence on their side, but the defense said there wasn’t enough time for Madrid to dispose of her body in the dumpster based on surveillance video.
“Sometimes the person that you want the most is the person that you can’t have. For Alex Madrid, 14-year-old Claudia Lucero was that person,” the prosecution began with.
In opening statements, the prosecution laid the groundwork for what happened to Claudia on Dec. 5, 2013.
According to police and the state, Claudia’s mother recently broke up with Madrid and made him move out of their apartment.
They said on that December morning, after Claudia’s mom and brothers left the house, Claudia was getting ready for school when Madrid came into the apartment, raped her, then took her life.
“Alex Madrid made the choice to get a ligature of some kind, wrap it around her neck, and at that point strangle her to death,” the prosecution said.
Police said he then put her in a gray tub wrapped in a comforter along with some of her belongings and disposed of her body in this blue dumpster at a nearby complex.
Claudia’s mother reported her as a missing person, thinking she may have run away, until the next morning when two women were searching for bottles and cans in that blue dumpster.
“At some point this female realized that what she was pulling on was a body, because the blanket came open and she saw there were two human legs underneath,” the prosecution said.
That body was identified as Claudia.
But the defense said in their opening statements surveillance footage shows an unlikely timeline that Madrid could have dumped the teen’s body.
Madrid’s attorney said, according to the video, that the dumpster was emptied at 7:18 am.
“There’s a window on those videos between 7:18-7:28 a.m.,” said the defense attorney.
He said the surveillance video picked back up at 7:28 a.m. and claimed that in that narrow window, Madrid would not have had time to commit this act.
“You are not going to see Mr. Madrid in that video. You are not going to see Mr. Madrid putting a body in the dumpster,” said the defense.
But the prosecution said in addition to Claudia’s belongings found in the dumpster with her body, she was also wrapped in a trunk floor mat that appeared to be missing from Madrid’s trunk with a tag that matched the same make and model as his car.
DNA results, including sem*n found on Claudia’s body, also matched Madrid, but his attorney claimed police had their minds made up and never looked at anyone else.
“Investigators in the case fail to investigate other possibilities,” said the defense attorney. “It was a rush of judgement.”
Claudia’s brother testified late Thursday afternoon; he was the last person to see her alive.
He said a blue necktie was missing from his tie rack and had an audibly surprised reaction in the courtroom when he was shown it for the 1st time as evidence.
The insinuation from the state was that it was likely the murder weapon.
This case was incredibly hard to choose a jury for.
This is a death penalty case, which is something people have harsh views for or against, so the court had to find open-minded people who won’t make a judgment until it’s time to decide a verdict.
Also, the judge told the jurors to expect to be here through the end of January.
Because this trial is so long, they were worried about having enough jurors.
There are 18 jurors sitting through the entire trial with 6 alternates, but nobody will know who the alternates are until they reach the end of the guilt phase.
(source: azfamily.com)
USA:
Democrats Scrub Death Penalty Opposition From Campaign Platform—-For the 1st time in more than a decade, the Democratic Party platform includes no mention of abolishing the death penalty.
In 2016, the Democratic Party became the country’s 1st major political party to formally call for abolishing the death penalty. The party’s platform that year, released in the aftermath of a high-profile botched execution, called the punishment “cruel and unusual,” “arbitrary and unjust,” expensive to taxpayers and ineffective in deterring crime. The document also nodded to the people exonerated from death row as evidence of the risk that the government will kill innocent people.
During the 2020 campaign, the Democratic platform reiterated support for abolishing the death penalty. When Joe Biden entered office the following year, he became the st president to publicly oppose capital punishment — a dramatic shift from his time in the Senate, when he once bragged that the sweeping crime bill he was pushing did “everything but hang people for jaywalking.”
However, as his term winds down, Biden has little to show for the party’s promise to abolish capital punishment. On Monday, the Democrats approved their 2024 platform, which includes no mention of the death penalty. This year’s platform marks the 1st time since 2004 the platform has not mentioned the death penalty (the 2008 and 2012 platforms called for making the punishment less arbitrary).
Public support for the death penalty has been gradually declining. A Gallup poll last year found that 65% of Democrats oppose the punishment.
The Democratic National Committee did not respond to an email asking if the party still supports abolishing the death penalty.
The outcome of this year’s presidential election has life-or-death stakes for the people on federal death row. During the last 6 months of Donald Trump’s presidency, his administration executed 13 people, ending a 17-year de facto moratorium on federal executions.
At the time, Biden’s campaign website pledged to work with Congress to abolish the federal death penalty and incentivize states to put an end to the practice. Once he entered office, the Justice Department reinstated the execution moratorium and launched a review into death penalty policies and procedures.
But little has come from that review, and the DOJ has continued to fight to maintain existing death sentences. In January, the DOJ announced it would pursue the death penalty against Payton Gendron, who has admitted in state court to killing 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket because they were Black.
For years, death penalty abolition bills in the House and Senate have languished. “I wouldn’t say that the White House has been actively engaging people to support the bill,” Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), the sponsor of one of the death penalty bills, told HuffPost earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Republicans are gearing up for another execution spree if Trump wins reelection. Project 2025, an 887-page document outlining plans for a second Trump presidency released by a coalition of conservative groups, suggests that Trump execute every remaining prisoner on death row. The document also envisions pursuing the death penalty in cases involving violence and sexual abuse of children. In a footnote, the document notes that this would require convincing the Supreme Court to overrule its previous findings on when the death penalty is appropriate, but that “the [Justice] department should place a priority on doing so.”
Trump reportedly plans to announce his support for expanding the death penalty to non-homicide crimes.
The campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris did not respond to an email asking if she would specify her own position on the death penalty.
When Harris became San Francisco’s district attorney in 2004, she promised to “never charge the death penalty.” She upheld that promise, even under pressure to pursue capital punishment for a man accused of killing a police officer. When she ran for California attorney general, she said she would “enforce the death penalty as the law dictates.” After narrowly defeating her Republican opponent, her office defended use of the death penalty in court.
In addition to dropping any mention of the death penalty, this year’s Democratic platform noticeably backs away from several criminal justice reforms the party embraced in 2020, when the police killing of George Floyd prompted nationwide protests against police brutality. The criminal justice section of the 2020 platform opens by declaring that the system is “failing” to keep people safe and deliver justice. It contrasts the promise of America as the “land of the free” with the reality that the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world and calls for “dramatically” reducing the number of people held in prisons and jails.
The 2020 platform includes support for several specific policies that are either absent from the 2024 platform or have been considerably toned down, including: ending life-without-parole sentences for people under 21, banning police from using chokeholds, decriminalizing cannabis, eliminating cash bail and repealing mandatory minimum sentences.
This year’s platform makes no mention of mass incarceration. Instead, it describes the need to “fund the police” and touts DOJ funding for more police officers. The platform claims Biden “took action to enhance public trust” by signing a “historic” executive order directing federal law enforcement agencies to ban chokeholds “unless deadly force is authorized” — a move described by civil rights groups as only a first step on police reform.
Much of the criminal justice section focuses on the Biden administration’s modest reforms on cannabis. In 2022, Biden pardoned every person convicted of simple marijuana possession under federal law — which did not result in anyone being released from prison. The pardons did not apply to people convicted of selling or distributing marijuana, which accounts for the majority of people with federal cannabis-related convictions. And although the Justice Department has moved to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous category of drug, it has stopped short of legalization.
(source: huffpost.com)
SOMALIA—-executions
UNICEF statement on execution of 4 youths in Puntland state, Somalia
UNICEF notes with deep regret the execution of 4 young people in the Somali state of Puntland this past weekend for offences committed as children when they were under the age of 18, while they were allegedly associated with Al Shabaab. The convictions and sentences were issued by military courts, which lack specialized child justice procedures and are no place for children.
UNICEF recalls that the Puntland Age Verification Committee including representatives from Puntland authorities met with the young people and concluded that they were minors at the time of arrest and that they should not face the death penalty.
UNICEF requests the Puntland authorities to prevent the imposition of death sentences and calls for the due process to be ensured for all young adults arrested for their association with armed groups when they were below the age of 18 years, in line with the Juvenile Law, endorsed by the Puntland authorities and the government’s obligation to international human rights obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
UNICEF urges the Puntland authorities to treat children associated with armed groups as victims and calls for a review of current judicial procedures to ensure that children are not tried by military courts, have access to appropriate judicial procedures, and are in line with definitions of a child contained in the Puntland Juvenile Justice Act and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Somalia has ratified. The authorities are urged to take advantage of pathways for reintegrating children associated with armed groups, which already exist and have proven to be effective in upholding the rights of the child. As UN partners, we stand ready to work with the government to further implement these processes, including through the implementation of relevant government action plans to strengthen the protection of children in armed conflict.
(source: unicef.org)
FIJI:
Return of death penalty not solution to Fiji’s fight against drugs, human rights chair and home affairs minister say
The chairperson of the Fiji Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission (FHRADC) shot down a suggestion by a senior government minister to bring back the death penalty to deter international drug traffickers.
This week, Women and Children’s Minister Lynda Tabuya told local media she wanted to “see the death penalty brought to Fiji for those who traffic large quantities of drugs”.
The minister said Fiji continued to be used as a transit point for drug traffickers.
“We are vulnerable, our borders are vulnerable, we need to explore the possibility of the death penalty to protect our people,” she said.
However, the FHRADC is calling for stronger policies, laws and judicial processes to tackle the issue.
Fiji abolished the death penalty in 1979 and the country’s constitution ensured that every person had a right to life.
“The commission is of the view that the death penalty is not the solution to the rising drugs problem,” FHRADC chairperson Pravesh Sharma said in a statement on Thursday.
Sharma said capital punishment “is a serious violation of human rights”.
“Rather, the government should conduct baseline research to determine why our people are engaging in drugs, and then put in place measures to better address the issue.”
Sharma called for “rehabilitation of addicted people to prevent drugs from entering Fiji”.
“We need to strengthen our border security, raise awareness, and educate our people about the impacts of drugs.”
He added severe prison sentences for convicted drug offenders “will continue to have a deterrent effect”.
This follows Tabuya’s suggestion of capital punishment for those who trafficked large quantities of drugs.
Tabuya’s comments were met with mixed reactions from the Fijian public on social media, with comments including “this is a really dangerous rhetoric” to “a death penalty sentence will save our country”.
At least 2 MPs have voiced opposition to the suggestion.
Minister emphasises ‘humane strategies’
Home Affairs Minister Pio Tikoduadua, who had been at the forefront of the fight against drugs, said the death penalty was not something that was part of their strategy.
He said the key to tackling the country’s drugs crisis “lies in comprehensive and humane strategies that address the underlying issues, while ensuring justice is served”.
Tikoduadua said the Fijian government’s recent initiatives, such as the National Countering Illicit Narcotics Strategy 2023-2028 and the ongoing Police Reset, were designed to tackle these complex issues more effectively.”
The Narcotics Strategy, launched in June, focused on comprehensive measures, including demand and supply reduction, alternative development, and harm reduction strategies.
It also involved the establishment of a Counter Narcotics Bureau with a budget allocation of $2.5 million, tasked with leading enforcement operations and enhancing border control measures.
“In parallel, the Police Reset aims to modernise the police force through capacity building and cultural shifts, backed by partnerships like the MOU with the Australian Federal Police,” Tikoduadua said.
“These strategies represent a holistic approach to addressing drug trafficking and related crimes through stronger institutions, better resources, and international collaboration, which are likely to yield more sustainable results.
He added these were “crucial steps” taken by the government to address the problem.
“These efforts prioritise building a secure environment through robust law enforcement and community-based prevention strategies, avoiding the irreversible consequences associated with the death penalty.”
(source: rnz.co.nz)
2 opposition Members of Parliament oppose the death penalty
2 Opposition Members of Parliament, Ketan Lal and Virendra Lal have opposed the statement made by the Minister for Women, Children, and Social Protection Lynda Tabuya that the Government should impose the death penalty for drug traffickers who traffic drugs in large quantities.
Ketan Lal says Fiji’s Constitution, particularly Articles (8) and (11), enshrines the right to life and the protection against cruel and degrading treatment.
He stresses that reintroducing the death penalty would not only violate these fundamental rights but also erode the very fabric of the justice system, which is grounded in the protection of human dignity and the rule of law.
He says any move to reinstate such a draconian measure would be a regressive step, undermining Fiji’s international standing and moral authority.
Tabuya says the death penalty will be a deterrence for the drug lords not to bring drugs into the country.
Virendra Lal says that even though these people are part of the social decay that is plaguing our nation, the reactionary comment by Tabuya begs the question, why only drug traffickers.
He says he is firmly against the recent call by Tabuya to reintroduce the penalty.
Lal also emphasized there are far darker and deeper issues that need rectifying and ensure that proper social protection is given to women and children.
(source: fijivillage.com)
Controversy Erupts after Tabuya Call for Death Penalty for Drug Traffickers
Minister for Women, Children, and Social Protection, Lynda Tabuya, has sparked controversy by advocating for the death penalty for drug traffickers.
Speaking at her ministry’s headquarters, Ms Tabuya argued Fiji’s role as a transit point for illicit drugs warrants the harshest penalties to deter traffickers.
However, her stance has been met with criticism from various quarters.
Ms Tabuya pointed out that Fiji is increasingly vulnerable because of its proximity to larger drug markets. Ms Tabuya said: “We’re a transit point for bigger developed countries.
What do we do to protect our borders and our people from these harmful drugs?”
Citing the example of Singapore, which imposes the death penalty for trafficking large quantities of drugs, she stressed the need for Fiji to consider similar measures.
“We need to claim our borders, our sovereignty, and send a message to all drug traffickers and lords,” the minister added.
Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration, Pio Tikoduadua, countered Ms Tabuya’s proposal, arguing for a more humane and comprehensive approach to combating drug trafficking.
He emphasised the importance of modernising the Police force and enhancing international cooperation.
“These strategies represent a holistic approach to addressing drug trafficking and related crimes through stronger institutions, better resources, and international collaboration, which are likely to yield more sustainable results,” Mr Tikoduadua said.
He further noted that the death penalty could undermine these efforts by ignoring the root causes of drug trafficking.
Human rights activists also voiced opposition.
Dr Shaista Shameem, former Director of the Fiji Human Rights Commission, condemned the death penalty as a cruel and degrading punishment that denies individuals the opportunity for rehabilitation.
She recalled how Fiji abolished the death penalty for treason in 1979, following unanimous parliamentary support.
“The death penalty was abolished after parliamentarians, including religious groups, agreed it was not the solution to any crime, even treason,” Dr Shameem said, adding that any call for its reinstatement should be approached with sensitivity and compassion.
The Fiji Law Society also weighed in, pointing out that the death penalty is not included in the Constitution and that any move to reintroduce it would face significant legal hurdles.
The death penalty was outlawed for all crimes in Fiji in 2015, and the 2013 Constitution prohibits its use.
Fiji’s ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) in 2015 further complicates any attempt to reintroduce the death penalty.
UNCAT mandates a global prohibition on torture and related practices, and Fiji’s commitment to these principles has been reinforced through enhanced training programmes for its security forces.
(source: fijisun.com.fj)
IRAN—-executions
Iran executes every 7 hours despite international outcry
The Islamic Republic of Iran has averaged 1 execution every 7 hours over the past month, as a new president was forming his cabinet following elections that some expected to bring change.
Between July 22 and August 21 alone, at least 106 individuals were executed in Iranian prisons, a reminder of the brutal measures the Islamic government has used for 4 decades despite international criticism, reported the US-based HRANA news agency on Thursday.
“The total number of reported violations indicates a concerning situation and underscores the urgency for the international community and the Iranian government to address these issues,” added HRANA.
The executions have not been limited to those convicted of violent crimes. Many of those hanged were political prisoners, protesters, and individuals from ethnic and religious minority groups, often sentenced in sham trials that lack transparency and due process, the report said.
Among those executed were Kamran Sheikh, a Sunni Kurdish prisoner, and Reza Rasaei, a protester arrested during the 2022 nationwide uprising.
Adding to the toll, at least 10 new death sentences were handed down, and 10 existing ones were confirmed by the judiciary during this period.
HRANA has highlighted how this culture of state-sanctioned violence only fuels further aggression and resentment, laying the groundwork for a cycle of violence that threatens the very fabric of the nation.
According to reports from human rights organizations, since the beginning of the current Iranian year (March 21) more than 388 people, including 15 women, have been hanged in Iranian prisons.
The surge in executions has not gone unnoticed by the international community. Human rights organizations, including the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights, have raised alarms over the unprecedented pace of executions. They have called for immediate international intervention to halt what they describe as the “killing machine” of the Iranian government.
On August 12, 4 international human rights organizations appealed to the United Nations, urging the establishment of an independent investigative mechanism to hold the Islamic Republic accountable for its actions.
Despite these calls for action, the Islamic Republic remains defiant, continuing its executions unabated. Political prisoners like Golrokh Iraee, who remains incarcerated in Evin Prison, have spoken out against the death penalty, urging a united front against the regime’s use of capital punishment as a tool of oppression. Iraee’s plea for the abolition of the death penalty echoes the sentiments of many Iranians who see no hope for a better future under the current system.
(source: iranintl.com)
Iran executes Orumiyeh man for drug-related charges
Iranian authorities executed Mohammad Daghestani, a prisoner from Orumiyeh, West Azerbaijan Province, on drug-related charges in Miandoab Prison early on 21 August.
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned that Daghestani was transferred to solitary confinement on 20 August in preparation for execution.
Daghestani, a 49-year-old father of 2 from the village of Haki in Orumiyeh, was arrested several years ago on drug trafficking charges.
(source: kurdistanhumanrights.org)
Fears grow for women’s rights activists jailed in Iran after 87 executions in 1 month—-Prisoners including Nobel prize winner Narges Mohammadi were reportedly beaten for protesting against a recent execution
There are fears for the fates of women’s rights activists imprisoned in Iran after a surge in executions since the election of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in July.
At least 87 people were reportedly executed in July, with another 29 executed on 1 day this month. The mass executions included Reza Rasaei, a young man sentenced to death for his participation in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
Human rights organisations fear further executions in the lead-up the 2nd anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in custody and the unprecedented nationwide protests that followed. Amini, who was 22, had been arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code before she died in September 2022.
About 70 women are now reported to be held as political prisoners in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, including 2 who have been given death sentences: the Iranian Kurdish journalist Pakhshan Azizi and the industrial engineer and women’s rights activist Sharifeh Mohammadi. A further 2 activists – Varisheh Moradi and Nasim Gholami Simiyari – have been given the same charges but are still to discover if they will be sentenced to death.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said multiple female political prisoners are at risk of executions based on “sham charges”.
“Faced with a women’s movement in Iran that refuses to back down, Islamic Republic authorities are now trying to threaten these women with the gallows, in a desperate attempt to silence dissent,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of CHRI.
The family of Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Nobel peace prize winner and celebrated activist, say that she was among the women at Evin prison who were reportedly injured after being beaten by guards for staging a protest in the prison yard against the execution of Rasaei.
The family put out a statement saying that after the protests on 6 August, the women’s ward was flooded with prison guards and security agents, and an order was issued to assault the protesters. Several women who stood in front of the security forces were severely beaten. The family said they were told Narges had collapsed and fainted after being repeatedly punched by guards. UN human rights experts have condemned reports that the women had been denied access to timely and appropriate healthcare.
Azizi and Sharifeh Mohammadi were sentenced to death in July on charges of “armed rebellion against the state”.
Azizi, a 40-year-old Kurdish women’s rights activist and social worker, was reportedly subjected to torture during interrogations, including mock executions. In a letter written from the Evin prison by Azizi, titled Denying the Truth and Its Alternative and published by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights NGO, she said she was tortured, subjected to mock executions and put in solitary confinement.
Zeinab Bayazidi, a former political prisoner and Azizi’s friend, told the Guardian that the death penalties against women and ethnic minorities were designed to dismantle the unified fight against the regime.
“The Islamic Republic is [retaliating against] the Woman, Life, Freedom revolution that spanned all borders from Kurdistan to Balochistan and Tehran, and caused solidarity and empathy and a revolution at this level, which has been unprecedented so far,” she said.
Sharifeh Mohammadi, 45, was arrested at her home in Rasht in December 2023, according to human rights activists.
Speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity, a close family member said they were shocked and had “never imagined Sharifeh would be issued a death sentence”. They said Sharifeh was also “shocked” after being hopeful of bail.
“Women have been among the strongest individuals standing against the regime during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. I believe by sentencing Sharifeh and others, they’re taking revenge.”
Sharifeh’s family said they had been reluctant to share the news of her death penalty with her 12-year-old son. “It is very difficult and we are trying to seek help from a child counsellor to break the news with the least amount of harm possible.”
A UN fact-finding mission on Iran this month said minorities in Iran had been disproportionately affected by a “striking surge in executions since the September 2022 protests”, with several death sentences rendered most recently against women of ethnic minority backgrounds.
Activists warned the repression on female activists was also evident through long-term prison sentences based on fabricated charges and forced confessions.
Soma Rostami from Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, said: “It is clear to all that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s only purpose for executions is to spread fear among the people. There has been a lot of pressure on women’s activists and all kinds of repressions have been carried out to prevent women-led demonstrations from happening again.”
(source: The Guardian)
AUGUST 22, 2024:
NORTH CAROLINA:
NC man fights death sentence; closing arguments today in racial justice case—-Hasson Bacote, a Black man from Johnston County, was sentenced to death in 2009. He is challenging his death sentence under the state’s Racial Justice Act, arguing that race played a role in jury selection.
Closing arguments are set to begin Wednesday in a case that could impact more than 100 death row inmates in North Carolina.
Hasson Bacote, a Black man from North Carolina, was sentenced to death following a murder in Johnston County in 2007 during a robbery. Bacote is challenging his death sentence under the state’s Racial Justice Act, arguing that race played a role in jury selection.
Bacote’s attorneys have argued his case was mishandled and tainted by racism in jury selection and training. Attorneys representing Bacote told WRAL News to expect compelling statements on Wednesday to back up evidence and testimonies from social scientists and historians presented throughout the 2-week hearing.
Bacote was sentenced to death in 2009 by 10 white jurors and 2 Black jurors after he was convicted of shooting an 18-year-old named Anthony Surles during a robbery. One of Bacote’s arguments is that he wasn’t convicted of 1st-degree murder, unlike almost everyone else on death row.
If the death penalty was lifted for Bacote, he would still face life in prison.
A ruling in Bacote’s favor on Wednesday could allow more than 100 other North Carolina death row inmates to appeal their cases under the Racial Justice Act.
The Racial Justice Act, a law that the legislature passed in 2009 — and then repealed in 2013 — that lets death row inmates appeal their sentence on the basis of racism in their prosecution. Although the law has been repealed, people who had started their appeals already were allowed to carry on those efforts due to a 2020 ruling by the state Supreme Court.
Grethecn Engel, the executive director at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, a non-profit law firm that represents people on death row, said she is hopeful there will be a reckoning and that it will motivate Gov. Roy Cooper to grant reductions or even pardons before his term ends.
“That would be really compelling to Governor Cooper, [a] really strong message about the untenable nature of the death penalty and a call for him to exercise his unbridled power to grant commutations,” Engel said.
The closing arguments, held at the Johnston County Courthouse, will be livestreamed on WRAL.com at 10 a.m.
Bacote is represented by the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and North Carolina Attorney Jay Ferguson.
(source: WRAL news)
Racial Justice Act case in Johnston County could affect every NC prisoner on death row
SA Superior Court judge is now considering a case that could impact every person sitting on death row in North Carolina.
Hassan Bacote’s team of lawyers are challenging his death sentence. He’s a Black man who was sentenced to death in Johnston County by a majority-white jury in 2009.
That same year, the Racial Justice Act was passed. The law allows capital defendants to challenge their death sentence on the basis that race played a significant factor in decisions to seek or impose the death penalty.
15 years later, the court is now looking at whether race played a role in Bacote being sentenced to death.
“This is a big deal. The issue of who gets the death penalty, of who sits in the room that decides who gets the death penalty is an issue that is roiled this nation since — you pick the date,” ACLU Senior Counsel Henderson Hill said during closing arguments.
The ACLU said during Bacote’s case, the prosecution removed Black jurors 3 times more often than white jurors.
“White jurors with this same perspective are seated in the box; Black jurors with that same background get shown the door,” Hill said.
The NAACP said Bacote’s white counterparts had a greater chance of being spared in sentencing.
“During the relevant time period for this case, 100% of Black individuals who are capitally prosecuted were sentenced to death, and if you were white, you had greater than 50% chance of getting a life sentence,” said Ashley Burrell from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Lawyers representing the State are refuting those claims.
North Carolina Department of Justice Attorney Jonathan Babb, citing census data, said more white people were living in Johnston County at the time of the trial and the selected jurors were an accurate representation of the demographics.
“The state does not condone or defend some of the notes that were displayed by the defense,” said Babb.
The verdict in this case could ultimately impact 135 people on death row right now.
(source: WTVD news)
A call to commute North Carolina death sentences—-Billboards urging Gov. Roy Cooper to commute the sentences of inmates on death row were unveiled Aug. 19 in Raleigh.
Capital punishment opponents want Gov. Roy Cooper to commute death sentences before leaving office.
The NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty hosted a rally on Aug. 18 in Raleigh with gun violence activist the Rev. Sharon Risher of Charlotte, whose mother and 2 cousins were killed in a racially motivated mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. Billboards went up the next day demanding Cooper commute death row inmates’ sentences.
The billboards, which will be moved around Raleigh for three months, were paid for by coalition supporters.
Risher joined capital punishment opponents, death row exonerees and friends and family of homicide victims and people who were executed in a symbolic march to the Governor’s Mansion to demand commutations.
“We are asking Gov. Cooper to hear our call for mercy, for justice, and for healing,” she said. “Executions will not bring back our murdered family members. They will only create more hate and suffering. We want no more executions in our names.”
The rally marked the 18th anniversary of North Carolina’s last execution, which was carried out on Aug. 18, 2006, at Central Prison. Samuel Flippen became the last of 43 people executed in the modern era.
North Carolina has 136 people on death row, with the longest tenured sentenced in 1985 – long before the launch of judicial reforms for fairer trials and proportionate sentencing. Many of those defendants were convicted by all-white juries, which research shows tend to lead to stiffer penalties against Black defendants.
“Our billboards use an image of North Carolina’s execution chamber because we want the governor to clearly understand the stakes,” said Noel Nickle, executive director of the Coalition. “If he doesn’t take action to commute these decades-old death sentences to prison terms, it’s extremely likely that North Carolina will return to executing people. We could go from no executions for two decades to a spree of state-sanctioned killing.”
(source: The Charlotte Post)
FLORIDA—-impending execution Catholic bishops urge Governor DeSantis to spare the life of Dozier School for Boys survivor
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops (FCCB) has implored Gov. Ron DeSantis to stay the execution of Loran Cole and commute his sentence to life without the possibility of parole. Cole is scheduled to be executed on August 29 for the 1994 murder of John Edwards. He was also convicted of robbing, kidnapping and assaulting Mr. Edwards’ sister.
From June 1, 1984 through November 14, 1984, 17-year-old Cole was housed at the notorious Arthur G. Dozier School in Marianna, Florida. Cole’s execution is scheduled on the heels of the governor’s approval of the Dozier School for Boys and Okeechobee School Victim Compensation Program, which will provide reparations for hundreds of men who endured the brutal abuse and torture at these state-based institutions.
“Mr. Cole himself was beaten, raped and tormented at Dozier,” said Michael Sheedy, FCCB executive director, in an August 14, 2024, letter to DeSantis on behalf of the bishops of Florida. “He witnessed torture and daily beatings of other students. He was once forced to clean up the remains of another student who died by suicide after jumping off a building. He had his legs broken after trying to escape. Mr. Cole’s jury never heard about the physical and mental abuse he endured at the hands of officers at Dozier.”
Sheedy also noted, “Never having received mental health and trauma treatment until his arrival on death row in his late 20s, Mr. Cole, at age 57, is not the same person who committed the grave crimes for which he was convicted.”
The Catholic Church teaches that all human life is sacred. Even people who have committed terrible acts and caused great harm possess a human dignity instilled by God, our Creator. The death penalty attacks the inviolability of the human person and perpetuates the cycle of violence that is prevalent in our culture. Given our modern penal system, executions are unnecessary. Life-long incarceration without the possibility of parole is a severe yet more humane punishment that ensures societal safety, allows the guilty the possibility of redemption, and offers closure for victims of crime and their families.
Before Cole’s scheduled execution, Floridians will gather across the state to pray for him and his victims, for DeSantis as he considers the request to stay the execution, and for an end to the death penalty and the cycle of violence in society.
(source: flaccb.org)
ALABAMA—-impending execution
Alabama’s nitrogen execution protocol falls short, attorneys say in seeking delay
Lawyers for an Alabama death row inmate set to be executed in November said the state’s process for nitrogen hypoxia executions “is a set of suggestions and customs, changeable at any time,” and asked a federal judge to halt an execution set for this fall.
Carey Dale Grayson, 49, will be put to death on Nov. 21 at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. He’s set to be the 3rd execution this year using nitrogen gas.
The 1st was Kenneth Smith. Smith was executed in January and was the 1st nitrogen hypoxia execution in the country. The execution quickly became controversial, with Smith writhing on the gurney for several minutes.
In to court records filed late Tuesday, Grayson’s lawyers asked a federal judge for a preliminary injunction barring the state to execute Grayson.
“Rather than investigating what went wrong—as other states have done following issues with executions—(Alabama has) chosen to ignore clear and obvious signs the current protocol contains major problems that will result in more unconstitutionally torturous executions if it continues to be employed,” new court filings say.
“Alabama’s present method of using nitrogen for executions does not work the way (the state) claim(s), and carries an unacceptable risk of conscious suffocation, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.”
The lawyers said the state has made “unwritten alterations” to the heavily redacted protocol, doesn’t use qualified people throughout the procedure to monitor medical equipment, and haven’t revealed what they conceded in a confidential settlement with another prisoner earlier this month.
“In other words, this is hardly a protocol. It is a set of suggestions and customs, changeable at any time, and neither this Court nor Mr. Grayson knows exactly what Defendants will do when executing Mr. Grayson.”
Attorneys representing the state have said Smith held his breath for several minutes after the nitrogen began to flow through his gas mask, causing the physical reaction.
Grayson’s lawyers included Smith’s autopsy report in court filings. Their medical expert, a longtime anesthesiologist, read the autopsy and concluded Smith suffered from negative pressure pulmonary edema. According to the expert, that condition occurs when “inspiration is attempted against an upper airway obstruction, leading to fluid being drawn from blood vessels into the alveoli.”
That conclusion “support(s) the conclusion Mr. Smith was suffocated while conscious, in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” the lawsuit says. The state’s process for nitrogen executions “creates a risk of unconstitutional pain,” the expert said.
The autopsy notes Smith’s lungs did have evidence of fluid and blood.
Grayson’s lawyers, along with lawyers for Alan Miller– who is set to be executed using the same method in September– have argued Smith’s mask didn’t fit properly, allowing oxygen to seep in. Grayson’s lawyers said in court records the mask “did not work as (the state) represented…”
“It does not inherently produce an airtight seal,” said Grayson’s lawyers Tuesday. “It must be fitted to the person wearing the mask and tested as dictated by the manufacturer. That is critically important because, when oxygen leaks into the mask during the execution, breathing air comes into what is supposed to be a closed system, prolonging the execution, and suffocating the prisoner.”
Grayson was convicted with 3 other men for the brutal Feb. 22, 1994 slaying and mutilation of Vicki Lynn DeBlieux.
His medical expert said, in court records, that the state should do a physical examination of inmates prior to executions to identify any upper airway obstructions that could “inhibit his ability to breathe in the nitrogen gas.” He also said the state should provide some type of pre-hypoxia sedative.
The filing repeats earlier claims that Assistant Alabama Attorney General James Houts is involved in the training for prison officials on using masks. “In fact, the only person (Grayson’s lawyers are) aware that is involved in the training is Assistant Attorney General James Houts, a scuba hobbyist and private pilot employed by Defendant Marshall. His job, crucially, is related to the fit of the mask.”
(source: al.com)
TENNESSEE—-new death sentence
Sean Finnegan gets death penalty for murder of Jennifer Gail Paxton
An Anderson County jury returned Aug. 21 with the sentence for Sean Shannon Finnegan in the killing of Jennifer Gail Paxton of Knoxville: death by lethal injection.
On Aug. 19, the same 12 jurors found Finnegan, who had lived on Fairview Road in Oak Ridge for several years, guilty of:
2 counts of 1st-degree murder
Criminally negligent homicide (instead of another count of 1st-degree murder charge)
Attempted aggravated rape
Aggravated rape
Aggravated kidnapping
Especially aggravated kidnapping
Conspiracy to commit aggravated rape
Conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping
Abuse of a corpse
Tampering with evidence
He was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit 1st-degree murder and another count of aggravated rape.
A hearing will be held Nov. 7 to decide upon sentencing for the lesser charges – anything other than the murder charges – on which Finnegan was convicted.
Assistant District Attorneys Sarah Winningham Keith and Kevin Allen said Paxton’s body had been kept for about 8 months in a freezer in the bedroom, but was moved quickly by Finnegan to a place under his bed before police arrived to search for the body, which was found in early August 2020. They believe she was strangled to death in December 2019. Finnegan’s girlfriend or fiancee, 26-year-old Rebecca Dishman, told officers that Finnegan killed Paxton, strangling her with string over a lengthy period of time, taking breaks, and stopping to smoke.
Dishman reached a plea agreement with the district attorney general’s office last year, pleading guilty to 1st-degree murder and agreeing to testify against Finnegan in return for a life sentence. She testified against him last week.
The sentencing hearing for Finnegan began Aug. 20, with attorneys for both sides making opening and closing statements, allowing Paxton’s relatives to read statements on how her death had negatively impacted their family, and bringing in 2 character witnesses for Finnegan: a co-worker and his former sister-in-law, who painted a dark picture of his childhood.
Finnegan is never going to be free again, attorney Forrest Wallace assured Anderson County jurors on Aug. 20 at the beginning of the sentencing hearing. He said the minimum sentence they could give him for the 1st-degree murder of Jennifer Gail Paxton is 51 years. Finnegan turns 57 next month.
“Do the math,” he said.
Arguing for the death sentence, Anderson County Assistant District Attorney General Kevin Allen said, “Sean Finnegan must be given the same amount of mercy they (he and Rebecca Dishman) gave Jennifer Paxton.”
The early life of Sean Finnegan
Wallace brought 2 witnesses before the jurors, which he described as showing Finnegan’s humanity. The first was the manager who had worked with him at the bar in Knoxville, who testified during the trial he worked most of the time and was reliable.
His former sister-in-law painted a darker picture of Finnegan’s early life.
Roxanne Mundy of Indiana testified about his home life when she married into the family. Finnegan was in his early to middle teen years. He had 2 younger brothers and a sister, and 2 older brothers, including John Finnegan Jr., who Mundy married. They are now divorced.
“I was terrified of the man,” she said of her former father-in-law, Sean’s father. She described the man known as John Sr. or “Big John” as an abusive alcoholic and gambler who frequently abused his wife, Sean’s mother, both verbally and physically, including at least once “beyond recognition,” and causing the children to run for their rooms when he came home. The violence continued to the point that she got the wife to get an order of protection against him, she said, which he violated. She said she and John Jr. helped her get an apartment in their building for her, Sean and his younger brother and sister, the older brothers having moved out of the home in Florida by that time.
Mundy said before she met her husband, the family had fled Ohio, leaving behind their home and belongings, and were living in a car parked in a rest area in Florida until they had enough money for a home. Sean and one of the brothers were sent to live with uncles. She said she didn’t know if they were actually relatives or not. The younger siblings stayed with their mother in the car.
The subject of the uncles came up later. She said when a truancy officer showed up at the Finnegan home to report that Sean Finnegan and a brother weren’t coming to school, it was discovered that the uncles were picking them up. She recalled Sean coming home one day in a “hot mess,” very upset, and revealing he was being sexually and physically abused by the uncles and others.
As Mundy testified, Finnegan wiped tears from his eyes.
She said when the father found out Sean had been missing that much school, he beat him so bad that he was unable to go to school for about a week because of the bruises. Attorney Williams presented school records that he said indicated Sean essentially only went to school through the 8th grade.
The former sister-in-law jumped forward in the timeline to tell of an adult Sean Finnegan getting a job at a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, where he was the master chef and general manager, enjoying the job that included dressing in a white coat and chef’s hat and mingling with the guests and food critics.
“He was a great cook,” she said.
That restaurant would eventually close and he’d go to another, she said. He moved to East Tennessee when the restaurant wanted to expand to Knoxville. When his siblings couldn’t take care of his mother, she said, he offered to allow her to come stay with him. During the trial it came out that she had been in hospice at the time the offenses occurred and has since died.
Mundy said she hadn’t seen him in about 34 years, but she had known the adult Sean Finnegan to be someone that no one would guess was different, with a beautiful wife, pet dogs he loved, nice homes and clothes, and cordial to people. In response to questions, she said she knew he drank alcohol at night and smoke pot, getting drunk a lot.
On the state’s side, Paxton’s cousins gave statements previously reported on about how her death had impacted their lives. A new statement was given from Paxton’s grandmother, who relatives said she called her mom. It was read on the stand by Paxton’s cousin Brittany Payne. In the printed statement, the grandmother said, “Losing her destroyed my heart. She was my everything.” She added that the nightmares she had on earth would never end and that she knew she’d be with her granddaughter again in Heaven.
(source: The Oak Ridger)
OHIO:
Ohio Republican Calls For End of Death Penalty
An Ohio Republican has renewed calls for her state to abolish the death penalty.
Lawmakers in Ohio last year introduced bipartisan legislation to end capital punishment in the state. However, the bills have not moved out of committee.
The state’s ongoing inability to obtain lethal injection drugs led to an unofficial moratorium on executions in the state, with Republican Gov. Mike DeWine instructing lawmakers to find an alternative method in 2020. He has delayed several executions since.
State Senator Michele Reynolds, a Republican, said now is the time to push forward with abolishing the death penalty in Ohio.
Reynolds said the she wants to end the death penalty in her state because she is “pro-life.”
“Being pro-life is really about life period, all life,” she said, according to WBNS-10TV.
Proponents of the death penalty often cite the families of victims, but Reynolds said executions do not necessarily bring them closure.
“There have been a lot of families who have spoken about the death penalty just saying that because of the appeals and them having to relive and not really getting justice,” she said.
Newsweek has contacted Reynolds for comment via email. DeWine and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s offices have also been contacted for comment via email.
There are currently 119 inmates on the state’s death row, according to the 2023 Capital Crimes Report from Yost’s office. The cost of putting all of those inmates to death could cost between $121 million and $363 million, according to the report.
Ohio is 1 of 6 states where executions have been halted through executive action, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The state last executed an inmate on July 18, 2018.
Ohio is among 27 states that still have the death penalty, while 23 states and Washington, D.C. have abolished it, including states in the Midwest: Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota.
“I just think at this point we can join other Midwestern states and move forward in this conversation, and I think it’s a conversation worth having,” Reynolds said.
Use of the death penalty and public support for it is declining, but the drive to end it in Ohio comes as other state lawmakers are pushing to restart executions in the state.
House Bill 392 would allow death row inmates to choose between lethal injection and nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution and if lethal injection drugs are not available, nitrogen hypoxia would be used to put them to death.
Earlier this year, Alabama became the 1st state to put an inmate to death using the method, which critics have called cruel and experimental.
(source: newsweek.com)
MISSOURI—-impending execution
Mishandled Evidence Scuttles Prisoner’s Bid to Prove Innocence—-Prosecutors in Missouri who sought to free Marcellus Williams faced a setback after DNA analysis did not turn out as they had expected.
The new DNA lab report came in two days before Marcellus Williams was supposed to have his day in a suburban St. Louis courtroom, and it was a problem.
Not because the report showed that Mr. Williams, who claimed that he was wrongfully convicted of murder and faced a looming execution date, had touched the murder weapon. It did not.
But the report indicated that the weapon, a kitchen knife, had been mishandled during his trial, dashing his hopes that it could be used to help exonerate him.
Instead of sitting through a daylong hearing that was supposed to be an opportunity to poke holes in his conviction, Mr. Williams found himself agreeing to a compromise that would spare him the death penalty but keep him in prison for life without parole.
It was a stunning turn in a case that has drawn considerable attention in Missouri, where the state’s attorney general has fought at least three exoneration efforts, including the bid by Mr. Williams.
He was just weeks from a scheduled execution date, and in agreeing to an unusual guilty plea — in which he did not admit to committing the crime — Mr. Williams, 55, lived to contest his conviction if new evidence were to emerge supporting his contention that he is innocent.
A statement by his legal team, led by the Midwest Innocence Project, stopped well short of exultant. “This resolution ensures that Mr. Williams will not be executed for a crime he did not commit.”
The statement went on to note that no physical or forensic evidence has ever linked Mr. Williams to the crime, and asserted that the key witness testimony came from two people with reason to implicate Mr. Williams.
The local prosecutor, Wesley Bell, a Democrat who rose to prominence following the police killing of Michael Brown, a Black man, in Ferguson, Mo., 10 years ago, supported Mr. Williams’s innocence claim, filing a 63-page motion to overturn the conviction.
The state attorney general, Andrew Bailey, a Republican, has routinely opposed wrongful conviction claims, going so far as to try to keep people in prison after they have been exonerated.
A judge was supposed to begin hearing evidence on Wednesday and weigh whether to grant the motion by Mr. Bell. Shortly before 8:30 a.m., representatives from the attorney general’s office wheeled in 11 large plastic bins of evidence.
Those bins were opened, and the hearing that was planned never happened.
Instead, as journalists and spectators filled the benches, all the lawyers left the room, engaging in hours of negotiations behind the scenes. A planned lunchtime rally in support of Mr. Williams at a nearby park went forward as planned. Still, the court did not come to order until around 2 p.m.
Matthew Jacober, representing Mr. Bell’s office, revealed that the new DNA evidence, which was expected to be instrumental in the innocence claim, “did not fully support our initial conclusions.”
Initial testing of the knife detected male DNA that excluded Mr. Williams, raising his legal team’s hopes that a different perpetrator could be identified. But a new analysis found that the DNA was consistent with that of an investigator and a prosecutor involved in the original trial in 2001.
That finding suggested that the investigator and the prosecutor had mishandled what might have been the most important piece of evidence, leaving their own DNA and perhaps eliminating DNA that had been left by the perpetrator.
“The murder weapon was handled without proper procedures then in place,” Mr. Jacober said. “As a result, DNA was likely removed and added during the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Williams.”
Mr. Williams was convicted of the 1998 killing of Felicia Gayle, who was stabbed to death during a burglary of her home in University City, a suburb of St. Louis.
In court, Mr. Jacober said that the office “deeply regrets its failure” to preserve the evidence properly and that the office still believed that Mr. Williams’s constitutional rights had been violated.
A new Missouri law allows prosecutors to challenge past convictions if they believe the person is innocent or was convicted in error. In his written motion, Mr. Bell argued that Mr. Williams was excluded as the source of shoe prints, fingerprints and hairs found at the scene, and that the prosecutor had improperly excluded prospective jurors who were Black.
Besides Mr. Williams’s case, the law has been used 5 times. 3 led to convictions being overturned, while one challenge was rejected, and another was dismissed for procedural reasons.
Mr. Bailey has filed motions to block the innocence hearings from taking place and tried to appeal the judge’s rulings in the cases, saying that the State Supreme Court has “exclusive authority to review death sentences.” His opponents maintain that the law allows him to participate in the hearings but not to appeal the results.
After the new DNA analysis came back in the Williams case, Mr. Bell’s office concluded that the new findings had weakened the claim of innocence, though the prosecutors maintained that the case was still riddled with problems. They included the reliance on 2 witnesses who had been motivated by reward money and other help from law enforcement, and who had told inconsistent stories that contradicted the crime scene evidence.
Mr. Bell’s office proposed a consent judgment, or settlement. Mr. Williams would take what is known as an Alford plea, in which the defendant maintains his innocence but concedes that the state has enough evidence to obtain a conviction. Mr. Bell would drop the death penalty, and Mr. Williams would waive his right to appeal except if new evidence is discovered or a new law passed that applies to his case.
The judge, Bruce F. Hilton, said that he had reviewed some 8,000 pages of records in the case and had spoken by telephone with the victim’s husband, Daniel Picus, who said he was opposed to executing Mr. Williams. “The court finds the consent judgment is a proper remedy in this case,” the judge said.
The attorney general’s office objected, saying that the judge had no authority to resentence Mr. Williams to life without parole. After the hearing, he asked the State Supreme Court to block the agreement, lawyers involved in the case said.
Judge Hilton said the sentencing would proceed on Thursday morning after Mr. Picus was given a chance to address the court.
Mr. Bell was not present at the hearing; he was attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He recently defeated Representative Cori Bush in the Democratic primary for her House seat in a heavily Democratic district, so he will very likely be heading to Congress in January.
Mr. Bailey, who fended off a primary challenge this month and is also likely to win the general election in this deeply red state, was likewise absent but issued a statement. “Throughout all the legal games, the defense created a false narrative of innocence in order to get a convicted murderer off of death row and fulfill their political ends,” it said.
As the proposal was explained in court, Mr. Williams, who has taken the name Khalifah while in prison, listened wearing a white skull cap and silver-gray robe.
When questioned by the judge, he agreed that the arrangement was in his best interest. Asked how he pleaded to the charge of murdering Ms. Gayle, he answered, “No contest.”
(source: New York Times)
How Marcellus Khaliifah Williams’s Story Shines Light on the Injustices within the Legal System—-In response to the August 21 Consent Judgement, Kansas City’s Poet Laureate Melissa Ferrer Civil sheds light on the concept of justice in her op-ed, emphasizing a nurturing approach over punishment. Through Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams’ story, she challenges the flaws in the current legal system and advocates for a more compassionate and dignified treatment of individuals.
From the roots of language and the heart of humanity, the word “Justice” blossoms, entwined with the essence of equity and equality. In its truest form, justice is the sacred act of restoring balance to the scales of life, tipping gently towards fairness where there is imbalance.
As an abolitionist, I envision a world where justice is not a weapon of punishment, but a tender hand that nurtures and heals our communities. When a pauper steals a loaf of bread, true justice does not confine him to a cell but sows the seeds of plenty so that hunger is but a distant memory.
In our misguided pursuit of retribution, we imprison the brightest lights of our generation.
These souls, forged into flints by the weight of oppression, hold the potential to ignite transformation. Yet, what does it say of our society when gentle genius and profound insight are shackled, hidden from the world behind bars?
Take, for example, Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams. Having spent the past 24 years of his life on death row for a crime that bears no evidence of connection to him, Khaliifah faces an execution date set for September 24th.
Khaliifah is a father, prolific poet, devout muslim and serves as Imam at the Potosi Correctional Center. Over the past 24 years Khaliifah has served an immaculate sentence free from incident. During this time, Khaliifah has developed a practice of writing poetry that speaks deep into the human experience.
His poems are stark perspectives on his life, his relationships, and the world at large. Through his words, Khaliifah reminds us of the ways that incarceration can rob the world of genius and beauty.
When I was an educator, my children with the most disruptive behaviors, were children for whom the classroom model did not work. Each of them held a brilliant fire not often stoked or valued by the education system. What was seen as disruptive behavior was simply a child attempting to meet their own needs within a system that neglected them. The cost of trying to fend for themselves was often detention, displacement from the classroom and other punitive measures.
These responses taught our kids (because they’re really ours) that society was going to reject them for being themselves, that they were wrong for not fitting in and doing so loudly, and that they could not trust these institutions to hold them with the respect, attention, and tenderness that they deserved.
Those kids become adults who are continually making decisions for their survival in a world that does not value, honor, or believe in them. Some of them become artists, some of them don’t make it to the age of 30, and some of them move from confinement (detention) to confinement (prison).
And still, there are other adults who get caught up in the racial profiling of an institution that disproportionately criminalizes and penalizes Black men. In Khaliifah’s case, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney reviewed the DNA results and filed a motion to vacate Williams’s conviction, asserting the DNA evidence clearly exonerates him. Despite this, Attorney General Andrew Bailey has remained unflinching in his judgment that the state should move forward with the execution.
The circuit court set a hearing for the morning of August 21 to examine this exculpatory evidence and address the motion. The evidentiary hearing was dismissed in lieu of a consent judgment. The judgment resulted in a nullification of the execution in exchange for an Alford plea in which Williams agreed to life without parole. It must be stated that this is not an admission of guilt.
To date, no evidence has been found that links Williams to the murder of Felicia Gayle in 1998 and Khaliifah maintains his innocence.
If anything Khaliifah’s story shows us that at its core, this system cannot provide true justice.
In a world that is quick to dehumanize the voices and perspectives of “undesirables,” organizations like MADP (Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty), Decarcerate KC and A Nation In Exile are fighting to uplift the voices, stories, and perspectives of those who have been banished into the shadows. These three organizations have gathered together local performance poets in our KC community to give a public reading of Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams’ work.
If you would like to hear more about his story, how you can get involved, or about these organizations and the work they are doing in our community, you can attend the public reading at Turnsol Books, August 29th. The doors open at 7pm and the show starts at 8pm. This reading will be the closing night of an exhibit called CTRL + Burn, highlighting work from currently and formerly incarcerated artists.
(source: Melissa Ferrer Civil, The Kansas City Defender)
Missouri death row inmate expected to be resentenced to life without parole under new agreement
Missouri death row inmate Marcellus Williams is expected to be resentenced to life without parole under a consent judgment reached Wednesday, the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office announced, just over a month before he was scheduled to be put to death for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, a killing he denies committing.
The judgment dictates Williams enter an Alford plea, the office said in a news release, which allows a defendant to maintain their innocence while recognizing it is not in their interest to go to trial. On Wednesday, Williams entered the Alford plea of guilty to a charge of 1st-degree murder in Gayle’s death, the office said.
The judgment also vacates Williams’ death sentence.
“Under this agreement and in accordance with Missouri law, we anticipate Williams will be sentenced by the court to a term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” the release said, adding Williams’ sentencing is scheduled for Thursday morning.
In a separate statement, Williams’ attorney reiterated her client’s innocence, saying “nothing about today’s plea agreement changes that fact.”
“By agreeing to an Alford plea, the parties will bring a measure of finality to Felicia Gayle’s family,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell said, “while ensuring that Mr. Williams will remain alive as we continue to pursue new evidence to prove, once and for all, that he is innocent.”
Lawyers from the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office are due to present evidence in court Wednesday they say excludes a Missouri death row inmate as the perpetrator of a 1998 murder for which he’s scheduled to be executed next month.
Marcellus Williams, 55, is slated to be put to death September 24 for the fatal stabbing of 1-time St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Felicia Gayle, though he has always maintained his innocence. Williams’ lawyers and St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell cite 3 DNA experts who say testing of the murder weapon done in 2016 excludes Williams as Gayle’s killer – a contention they feel is further bolstered because he cannot be tied to other pieces of forensic evidence from the crime scene.
“Nothing puts Marcellus Williams at the crime scene,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, 1 of Williams’ attorneys and the executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, told CNN. “No one saw him there, none of the physical evidence puts him there … It was not him who wielded the knife. We already had this very unreliable evidence in the first place; now you tack on the DNA evidence and his innocence becomes even clearer.” With his execution looming, Williams’ claim he was wrongfully convicted highlights an inherent risk of capital punishment: a possibly innocent person could be put to death. Indeed, at least 200 people sentenced to death since 1973 have thereafter been exonerated, 4 of them in Missouri, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Bell – who earlier this month defeated US Rep. Cori Bush in the Democratic primary for her seat – filed a motion to vacate the inmate’s conviction and death sentence in January, the result of an independent review by the office’s Conviction and Incident Review Unit, Rojo Bushnell said. While the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office handled the 2001 trial against Williams, Bell did not take office until 2018.
The office of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey fought the motion and last month sought to prevent the St. Louis County Circuit Court from holding Wednesday’s hearing and reviewing the evidence, arguing the state Supreme Court – which set Williams’ execution date in June – had already rejected the claims Bell’s office intends to make. That effort, however, was unsuccessful: The Missouri Supreme Court denied the request by Bailey, a Republican.
In its own filing seeking the dismissal of the prosecutor’s motion, Bailey’s office argued only the state Supreme Court has the authority to stay Williams’ execution.
But the prosecutor’s motion says the DNA evidence now in question “has never been considered by a court.”
“This never-before-considered evidence, when paired with the relative paucity of other, credible evidence supporting guilt, as well as additional considerations of ineffective assistance of counsel and racial discrimination in jury selection, casts inexorable doubt on Mr. Williams’s conviction and sentence.”
Williams was convicted mainly on the testimony of 2 unreliable informants, the motion claims, calling them “known liars” who faced their own legal troubles and were “incentivized” by a $10,000 reward offered by Gayle’s family.
Williams had been scheduled for execution in 2017, but former Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, stayed the execution and appointed a five-person board to review the new evidence in the case, including the DNA. Greitens, however, resigned about a year later, and last year GOP Gov. Mike Parson issued an executive order dissolving the board and lifting the stay, saying in a statement the delay had deferred justice and left Gayle’s family “in limbo.” A day later, Attorney General Bailey filed a motion with the state Supreme Court to set Williams’ execution date.
Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office referred CNN to the motion to vacate Williams’ conviction. The Missouri Attorney General’s Office has not responded to a request for comment. CNN has also reached out to Daniel Picus, Gayle’s widower.
In a 2017 op-ed for the Post-Dispatch, Picus’ wife, Laura Friedman, said he and Gayle’s family had been victimized not only by her murder, but “by a justice system so excruciatingly slow that an end is elusive nearly two decades after the crime and now, by a media frenzy.”
“In addition, if the convicted killer is innocent, as some claim, that means there is a murderer yet to be apprehended – a scenario too terrifying to contemplate – and almost surely too late to seek or find justice,” Friedman wrote. “This is the necessary, but unspoken, corollary and the 1st thought of family members when a convicted killer’s innocence is resolutely asserted.”
The murder of Felicia Gayle
Gayle, 42, was killed in her home in the St. Louis suburb of University City on August 11, 1998, having been stabbed 43 times with a kitchen knife, the prosecutor’s motion and other court records state. She’d been a “kind and gentle woman who went out of her way to do nice things for people,” the Post-Dispatch’s Editorial Board in 2017 wrote, adding she’d left the paper six years before her death to volunteer full-time.
At the scene, investigators found hair, footprints and fingerprints that belonged to neither Gayle nor her husband. Missing from the home was Picus’ laptop and Gayle’s purse with several personal items.
But the investigation struggled, the motion says. In hopes of encouraging someone to come forward with information, Gayle’s family offered a $10,000 reward, which the motion says was “emphasized” in the “significant television and newspaper coverage of the case.”
The 1st informant emerged in June 1999, the motion says: Henry Cole called police and told them he’d been in prison with Williams, who was behind bars for an armed robbery committed the year prior. Cole – who acknowledged he came forward for the reward and struggled with drug addiction and mental illness, the motion says – alleged Williams confessed to Gayle’s murder, providing details of the crime he claimed Williams shared.
But Cole’s statements were inconsistent and at times contradicted evidence, the prosecuting attorney’s office says in its motion. Still, as investigators sought to corroborate his account, they turned to Williams’ former girlfriend, Laura Asaro, whom Cole had told them Williams had seen the day of the killing.
The woman at first denied having information about the crime, prosecutors’ motion states. But after meeting with police several times – and being promised charges she was facing would be dropped and told she would be eligible for the reward – Asaro eventually cooperated, telling police she had indeed seen Williams on the afternoon of the murder, the motion states.
Williams had blood on his shirt, scratches on his neck and a computer in his car, she said, according to the prosecutor’s motion. Williams later confessed to Gayle’s killing, she told investigators, according to the motion, which similarly notes inconsistencies between Asaro’s statements and Cole’s, as well as contradictions with known evidence in the case.
The next day, police seized Williams’ car and found inside a ruler from the Post-Dispatch, though the motion says it was never reported among Gayle’s missing belongings. Police did locate Picus’ missing laptop at the home of a man named Glenn Roberts, who said he’d received it from Williams.
DNA evidence has not previously been reviewed by a court
The prosecuting attorney’s motion contends Williams’ conviction “rested primarily” on Asaro’s and Cole’s testimony, because none of the evidence from the scene could be linked to Williams: The bloody footprints were not his, nor was the hair, the motion says. The fingerprints were never linked to Williams, either.
And though Picus’ laptop was recovered, the prosecuting attorney’s office says Roberts told investigators Williams said he’d gotten it from Asaro – a claim Roberts reiterated in an affidavit signed in 2020. Jurors at trial never heard this assertion, which the prosecutor’s motion says illustrates “the person with the most direct connection to the crime” was “Laura Asaro, and not Marcellus Williams.”
The DNA evidence now at the center of Williams’ innocence claim was not available at his trial. The state Supreme Court ordered the evidence tested in 2015, but 2 years later – after the testing had been done – it declined to halt the inmate’s execution without a hearing.
The prosecutor’s motion cites 3 DNA experts who determined the results exclude Williams as the source of male DNA found on the knife. “When you’re stabbing, DNA transfers because of restriction and force. If you’re stabbing anyone, you have a good chance of transferring your DNA because of that force,” one of those experts previously told CNN.
(source: CNN)
Missouri death row inmate agrees to new plea in deal that calls for a life sentence without parole
A Missouri death row inmate on Wednesday dropped his innocence claim and entered a new no-contest plea in an agreement that calls for a revised sentence of life in prison without parole.
But the Missouri Attorney General’s Office opposes the new consent judgment and will appeal in an effort to move ahead with the scheduled Sept. 24 execution of Marcellus Williams.
The complicated turn of events happened on the day that St. Louis County Circuit Judge Bruce Hinton was supposed to oversee a hearing requested by Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell aimed at vacating Williams’ f1t-degree murder conviction in the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle. Bell had cited DNA testing unavailable at the time of the crime that found someone else’s DNA — but not that of Williams — on the murder weapon.
After a lengthy delay with lawyers meeting behind closed doors, Matthew Jacober, a lawyer for the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, announced that even newer DNA testing released on Monday found contamination due to handling of the weapon by a former assistant prosecutor and investigator. The contaminated evidence made it impossible to show that someone else may have been the killer.
“The murder weapon was handled without proper procedures in place,” Jacober said. The improper handling occurred several years before Bell took office.
Williams agreed to an Alford plea, which is not an admission of guilt but acknowledges that evidence is sufficient to convict him. Under an agreement reached with St. Louis County prosecutors, Williams entered that plea on Wednesday. He’ll be sentenced Thursday — the agreement calls for life in prison without parole. Williams also agreed not to appeal.
“Marcellus Williams is an innocent man, and nothing about today’s plea agreement changes that fact,” Williams’ attorney, Tricia Bushnell, said in a statement. She noted that Gayle’s family supports setting aside the death penalty, and the plea “brings a measure of finality” to the family.
But the plea doesn’t guarantee Williams won’t be executed. Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey is appealing to the Missouri Supreme Court as he seeks to move ahead with the execution, arguing that a circuit court doesn’t have authority to overrule the state Supreme Court that set the execution date.
“Throughout all the legal games, the defense created a false narrative of innocence in order to get a convicted murderer off of death row and fulfill their political ends,” Bailey said in a statement. “Because of the defense’s failure to do their due diligence by testing the evidence that supposedly proved their point, the victims have been forced to relive their horrific loss for the last 6 years.”
Williams, 55, was hours away from execution in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay after DNA testing unavailable at the time of the killing showed that DNA on the knife matched someone else, not Williams.
That evidence prompted Bell to reexamine the case.
“This never-before-considered evidence, when paired with the relative paucity of other, credible evidence supporting guilt, as well as additional considerations of ineffective assistance of counsel and racial discrimination in jury selection, casts inexorable doubt on Mr. Williams’s conviction and sentence,” Bell’s motion stated.
Williams, who is Black, was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury consisting of 11 white people and 1 Black person.
A 2021 Missouri law allows prosecuting attorneys to file a motion seeking to vacate a conviction they believe was unjust. The law has resulted in exonerations of 3 men who spent decades in prison, including Christopher Dunn last month
. The Missouri Supreme Court set the September execution date on June 4, hours after it ruled that Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, was within his rights when he dissolved a board of inquiry convened by Greitens after he stopped the 2017 execution.
The inquiry board, consisting of 5 retired judges, never issued a ruling or reached a conclusion on whether the new DNA evidence exonerated Williams. Parson dissolved the board in June 2023, saying it was time to “move forward.”
In addition to Dunn, who spent 34 years behind bars for the death of a 15-year-old St. Louis boy, the Missouri law allowing prosecutors to challenge convictions led to freedom for two other men — Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson. Bailey was not attorney general when Strickland’s case went to a hearing, but his office opposed vacating the convictions of Dunn and Johnson.
Bailey also opposed efforts to overturn the conviction of Sandra Hemme, who spent 43 years in prison for murder, though that case was adjudicated through appeals, not a prosecutor’s motion. A judge ruled in June that Hemme should be freed. Bailey filed multiple appeals to try and keep her behind bars, but Hemme was released in July.
Strickland was freed in 2021 after serving more than 40 years for 3 killings in Kansas City after a judge ruled he had been wrongfully convicted in 1979. In 2023, a St. Louis judge overturned Johnson’s conviction. He served nearly 28 years for a killing he always said he didn’t commit.
Williams was the 1st death row inmate whose innocence claim went before a judge since passage of the 2021 law. Several other people who have been exonerated of crimes were in the courtroom to support him, including another former death row inmate. Joseph Amrine spent 17 years on death row before he was freed in 2003 after the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that no credible evidence linked him to the killing of another inmate.
Prosecutors at Williams’ trial said he broke into Gayle’s suburban St. Louis home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. When Gayle came downstairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen. Gayle, who was white, was a social worker who previously worked as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the car and that Williams sold it a day or 2 later.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a St. Louis cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors Williams confessed to the killing and offered details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted felons out for a $10,000 reward.
(source: newstalkkzrg.com)
OKLAHOMA:
City in Oklahoma Agrees to Pay $7.15 Million to Glynn Simmons, Exonerated After 48 Years in Prison
Costs Innocence Oklahoma
On August 14, the Associated Press reported that the city of Edmond, Oklahoma agreed to pay $7.15 million to Glynn Simmons, the longest-incarcerated innocent person in the United States. Mr. Simmons spent 48 years in prison, including 2 years on death row, before he was released last July. Mr. Simmons was officially exonerated by a judge in December 2023 and received $175,000 from the state of Oklahoma, the maximum amount allowed for wrongful convictions under state law. Officials have known since before Mr. Simmons’ 1975 trial that numerous witnesses saw him playing pool in Louisiana at the time he was accused of robbing and murdering a store clerk in Edmond. Mr. Simmons, now age 71, is fighting stage 4 liver cancer. His lawsuit claims against Oklahoma City and a retired city detective are still pending.
Mr. Simmons was featured in DPI’s recent analysis showing that the length of time before exoneration is increasing for death-sentenced prisoners due to factors such as official misconduct and strict procedural rules for appeals. For decades, Oklahoma prosecutors withheld records showing that the surviving witness, who had been shot in the head, identified at least 4 other men in lineups, not Mr. Simmons or his co-defendant Don Roberts. Mr. Roberts, who was also convicted and sentenced to death despite evidence showing he was in another state, was released on parole in 2008. Although District Attorney Vickie Behenna dismissed the charges against Mr. Simmons, she has denied Mr. Roberts’ requests for formal exoneration—blocking him from receiving payment from the state’s wrongful conviction statute. Many state wrongful conviction statutes have strict procedural requirements that prevent innocent people from accessing funds after release.
“Sometimes I build myself up to feeling free. Then I stumble out here to reality, to remember that, you’re not free. You can’t go out and get a job. I need a job now. But my convictions hold me back.” – Don Roberts
Studies consistently show that the death penalty is much more expensive than incarceration for natural life in prison, and wrongful conviction compensation is one of the death penalty’s many “hidden costs.” The federal government and states decide whether and how much they will pay prisoners for wrongful incarceration. Typically, the amounts increase depending on the type of penalty, the scope of official misconduct, and the length of time incarcerated, although there are often caps on the maximum amount of compensation. Our data show that 71% of death row exonerations involve official misconduct—including 95% of death row exonerations that took 30 years or longer. With the increasing length of time before exoneration, capital cases have resulted in some of the largest wrongful conviction payments. In February 2024, the city of Tampa, Florida agreed to pay $14 million to Robert DuBoise, who spent 37 years on death row before he was exonerated by DNA testing. “This is what happens when the police focus on the wrong person, make up evidence to fit their theory and don’t investigate to find the truth,” Mr. DuBoise said. “Lives are ruined and communities are less safe.”
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
CALIFORNIA:
Kevin Cooper’s Letter on Kamala Harris and His Wrongful Conviction
In a country where the criminal justice system for the most part is anything but just, I speak to you from experience of 40-plus years of being denied constitutional rights that I, as an American citizen, am told on paper I am entitled to receive but was denied. This includes being denied DNA testing from former California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, to being the victim of a sham “innocence investigation” ordered by current California Gov. Gavin Newsom and many of his associates.
At this point in time, my legal team and I are more concerned with what Newsom is doing to me than what Harris once didn’t do for me.
I find myself having to make a statement against what certain Republicans are trying to do. They are trying to hurt Vice President Kamala Harris’s chances to become the first woman – woman of color – president of the Divided States of America.
I cannot allow the Republicans to misuse my case against her. So therefore, I Kevin Cooper am forgiving Kamala Harris for once denying me DNA testing. If I can find it within my heart to forgive her, as I am still sentenced to death for murders that I did not commit, then how can the Republicans, who do not care about me, hold or use what she didn’t do as attorney general against her now?
In all honesty, I did not come to this conclusion easily. I came to it after listening to and believing what a few very important Californians in my life had to say on this subject. These Californians, by the way, happen to be a diverse group of women.
My spiritual friend Zanetta, who is proudly Christian, explained to me about the power of real forgiveness and how itis a constructive thing, while hatred and dwelling on negative things in the past can lead to destructive things.
My kindred spirit Zoe, who is raising her daughter to think and believe that she can be anything in this world that she wants to be, even president of the United States, helped to make me see the historical reality of this country having for the very first time, a woman as president and the powerful impact it will have on future generations of girls like her daughter.
Then there’s my conscience, Gavrilah, who expressed her fears of what we ALL have to lose if Trump becomes president again. His ongoing commitment to the racist and classist death penalty, the criminalization of poor people, specifically people of color, and filling up the courts with conservative judges are just a few of her very real fears.
The earth will be in even more danger than it already is, because it appears that many Republicans are more concerned with making money from the earth than saving the earth from human greed and destruction.
I was the one wronged by then Atty. Gen Kamala Harris, yet I am forgiving her. If I can do so, how dare a political party who doesn’t give a damn about poor people, especially Black and brown people, try to help themselves by using me to hurt her. If a Republican had been the attorney general at the time I requested DNA testing, they would have done the same thing to me – or worse. In fact, they already did, and that is why I am in the current position I am in.
In Solidarity and struggle while still sentenced to death,
Kevin Cooper
(source: davisvanguard.org)
USA:
Defense attorneys for Boston Marathon bomber seek recusal of judge overseeing case
Attorneys for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are seeking to remove the judge overseeing the protracted legal battle over Tsarnaev’s death sentence.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers said during a hearing in federal court in Boston on Wednesday that U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole should be recused from the case, pointing to what they said were comments O’Toole made about the case on podcasts and at public events during the appeals process.
Prosecutors said they are not opposed to a hearing on the issue, but they said they believe the motion is meritless.
O’Toole scheduled a hearing on the recusal request for next month. Tsarnaev was not in court.
“I want to dispose of that issue immediately, one way or another,” O’Toole said.
During the hearing, O’Toole also said all future filings connected to the case are to be done under seal to protect the integrity of the process.
A victim of the bombing, Mikey Borgard, attended Wednesday’s hearing.
Borgard said he was walking home from work on the day of the marathon when the bombs exploded. He suffered hearing loss and from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I was 21 when the marathon happened. I’m 33 now. This has been a very, very long process and I really kind of wish it was over,” said Borgard, who wear hearing aides. Despite his injuries, Borgard said opposes capital punishment.
“I very strongly oppose the death penalty and that’s across the board. It does not matter who you are, I think the death penalty is inhumane,” he said. “That is essentially an eye for an eye, and that is very old way of looking at things.”
A federal appeals court in March ordered O’Toole to investigate the defense’s claims of juror bias and to determine whether Tsarnaev’s death sentence should stand following his conviction for his role in the bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds near the marathon’s finish line in 2013.
If O’Toole finds jurors should have been disqualified, he should vacate Tsarnaev’s sentence and hold a new penalty-phase trial to determine if Tsarnaev should be sentenced to death, the appeals court said.
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence imposed on Tsarnaev after the 1st Circuit threw out the sentence in 2020. The circuit court found then that the trial judge did not sufficiently question jurors about their exposure to extensive news coverage of the bombing. The Supreme Court justices voted 6-3 in 2022 when they ruled that the 1st Circuit’s decision was wrong.
The 1st Circuit took another look at the case after Tsarnaev’s lawyers urged it to examine issues the Supreme Court didn’t consider. Among them was whether the trial judge wrongly forced the trial to be held in Boston and wrongly denied defense challenges to seating 2 jurors they say lied during questioning.
Tsarnaev’s guilt in the deaths of those killed in the bombing was not at issue in the appeal. Defense lawyers have argued that Tsarnaev had fallen under the influence of his older brother, Tamerlan, who died in a gun battle with police a few days after the April 15, 2013, bombing.
Tsarnaev was convicted of all 30 charges against him, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction and the killing of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Officer Sean Collier during the Tsarnaev brothers’ getaway attempt.
(source: Associated Press)
MALAYSIA:
EX-SPECIAL BRANCH OFFICER’S DEATH PENALTY COMMUTED TO 38 YEARS IN PRISON
(see: https://www.bernama.com/tv/news.php?id=2331743)
FIJI:
Fiji minister wants to ‘explore the possibility of death penalty’ to tackle drug crisis
A Cabinet minister in Fiji has floated the idea of bringing back the death penalty, hoping it will send a warning to international drug traffickers using the island nation as a transit point – a call that has attracted mixed reactions from the public.
Fijian law enforcement agencies have been found wanting to tackle the rapid spread of the sale and consumption of hard drugs trafficked into the country by international drug cartels and criminal networks.
But the Minister for Women and Children, Lynda Tabuya, believes capital punishment as a “deterrence” can be the solution to protect the community.
“I would like to see the death penalty brought to Fiji for those who traffic large quantities of drugs,” she told local media at a news conference on Wednesday.
“We need to do this as a deterrence because as Fiji continues to be used as a transit point.
We are vulnerable, our borders are vulnerable, we need to explore the possibility of the death penalty to protect our people.”
Fiji is in the company of about 170 nations that have abolished the death penalty.
“There is growing consensus for universal abolition of the death penalty,” according to the UN Human Rights Office.
“Despite this abolitionist trend, the death penalty is still employed in small number of countries, largely because of the myth that it deters crime.”
While the Fijian government has not previously hinted at such a move, Tabuya said Fiji needed to send a message “to all the drug lords”, according to local media reports.
However, Minister’s comments have divided the ordinary Fijians, who took to social media to express either their support or opposition to the suggestion.
“We can all have our beliefs & ideas about this but there are hundreds of studies that show that harsh sentences do little to deter crime (sic),” wrote one user on X (formerly Twitter), who was against the idea.
“This is really dangerous rhetoric,” wrote another, calling on the Minister to “Please stop”.
One person posted that Tabuya “needs to go immediately”.
“The poor iTaukei youths will be impacted by this the most,” they wrote, adding “This women is advocating for state-sponsored execution that could breach the rights of indigenous peoples (sic).”
But others on Facebook reacted with a more positively, saying the death penalty had worked for South East Asian nations, such as Singapore and Philippines, and could also work for Fiji.
“Totally agreed [to the death penalty brought back],” said one Facebook user.
“Fiji is a beautiful and peaceful country. But Drug peddlers has ruined the culture and the future of this nation. A death penalty sentence will save our country (sic).
Another Facebook user added: “100% agreed. Fiji needs harsh penalties for drugs. There’s no other way. We must learn from Singapore, no drugs in that country.”
“DEATH PENALITY SHOULD ALSO BE LEGALISED FOR RAPE AND MURDER..(sic),” a 3rd added.
RNZ Pacific has contacted the Fijian government for comment.
(source: rnz.co.nz)
SAUDI ARABIA:
‘Cruel torture’: Drug convicts await execution in Saudi
The 2 Egyptian inmates ate a routine final dinner in a prison in northern Saudi Arabia, not knowing they would be put to death for drug crimes the next morning.
Their abrupt killing this month extended a recent spree of drug-related executions in Saudi Arabia, after officials ended a moratorium on the death penalty for such crimes less than 2 years ago.
The cases have spurred outcry from human rights groups and spread fear in Tabuk prison, near the Jordanian border, where inmates told AFP more than 50 defendants have been sentenced to die over drug smuggling and worry their executions could come at any moment.
“We don’t know whose turn it is. Maybe it’s me or my closest friend,” said Mohammed, a 40-year-old Egyptian who ran a hotel in Riyadh before his arrest in 2015 for receiving a shipment of furniture that turned out to be stuffed with drugs.
“We are not notified in advance to say goodbye to our loved ones or even prepare ourselves psychologically,” Mohammed, in tears, told AFP by phone from the Tabuk facility.
He agreed to be identified by his 1st name only to avoid repercussions.
Since May, Saudi Arabia has executed 28 people on drug-related charges, according to an AFP tally based on official statements, up from just 2 in all of 2023.
This year’s toll includes the 2 Egyptians killed last week in Tabuk: Walid Farouk and Youssef Kleib, who the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said were guilty of smuggling hashish and amphetamines.
All told, Saudi Arabia executed at least 170 people last year, more than any other country besides China and Iran. It is on course to exceed that figure this year.
The authorities deem the executions to be compatible with Sharia law — the Islamic legal code based on the teachings of the Koran — and necessary to “maintain public order”.
Though state media reports do not specify how executions are carried out, Saudi Arabia is notorious for beheadings, contributing to its forbidding reputation.
- Short-lived moratorium –
As de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tries to transform Saudi Arabia into a business and entertainment hub, he has hinted at a softening of its approach to capital punishment.
In a transcript of an interview with The Atlantic magazine published by state media in March 2022, Prince Mohammed said the kingdom had “got rid of” the death penalty except for cases of murder or when someone “threatens the lives of many people”.
However, in November 2022 the authorities announced the 1st executions for drug crimes in nearly 3 years, trampling on a moratorium announced by the kingdom’s official human rights commission.
“We were relieved and very happy when we heard about the moratorium on executions in drug cases. I felt that life had given me a 2nd chance,” said Mohammed, the Egyptian inmate in Tabuk.
Now that the executions have resumed, those hopes have been dashed, he said.
State media reported 19 drug-related executions in late 2022 before the pace slowed considerably, only to pick up again this past July.
- ‘Execute me now’ –
Saudi Arabia is a major market for the addictive amphetamine captagon, which floods in from Lebanon and war-torn Syria, prompting the authorities to launch a high-profile crackdown last year involving a flurry of raids and arrests.
Duaa Dhainy, a researcher for the Berlin-based European-Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR), sees a link between that operation and the latest executions.
“We believe the campaign made prisons more crowded, and it seems that the recent executions are an attempt to close some pending cases,” she said.
The Saudi government did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
Human rights groups like ESOHR, Amnesty and Reprieve say executions are all the more unacceptable because of problems with Saudi Arabia’s justice system.
These “general flaws” include defendants’ “exposure to torture and ill-treatment and their lack of the right to adequate self-defence,” Dhainy said.
That rings true for one 34-year-old Egyptian death row inmate who, fearing retribution from prison authorities, asked to be identified only as Shadi, a pseudonym.
A taxi driver in the coastal city of Jeddah, Shadi was arrested in 2018 and sentenced to death the following year for drug trafficking, which he denies.
“I was wronged, I never got a fair trial and I didn’t have a lawyer to defend me,” said Shadi, who has a 10-year-old son back in Egypt.
As the executions tick up, Shadi told AFP he found the years spent behind bars awaiting his own death to be unbearable.
“Waiting for the death sentence is cruel torture,” he said.
“If you are going to execute me eventually, execute me now.”
(source: france24.com)
IRAN—-executions
Amid Rising Executions, Iran Puts 3 More to Death
The Islamic Republic of Iran has carried out the executions of 3 more prisoners amid a rise in the use of the death penalty.
A prisoner previously sentenced to death on drug-related charges was executed in Urmia Prison on Wednesday morning.
Human rights groups identified the prisoner as Mohammad Daghestani, who was arrested on drug charges and later sentenced to death by the Islamic Republic’s judiciary.
On Tuesday, the death sentences of 2 prisoners, Mohammad Karamizadeh and Esmail Javadi, were carried out at Ghezel Hesar Prison.
Each had been sentenced to death for separate cases of premeditated murder.
According to a report by Amnesty International, Iran has reached its highest level of death sentence executions in the last 8 years, with the judiciary of the Islamic Republic executing 853 people in 2023 alone.
The report indicates that 481 executions, more than 1/2 of the total, were related to drug crimes.
This marks an 89 % rise in death penalties for drug-related offenses compared to 2022 when 255 people were executed.
The latest numbers also show a staggering 264 % increase compared to 2021, when 132 individuals faced execution on similar charges.
(source: iranwire.com)
Iranian Political Prisoners Mark 30th Week of Hunger Strike in ‘No to Executions’ Campaign
The 30th week of the hunger strike by political prisoners in Iran, part of the “No to Executions on Tuesdays” campaign, took place on Tuesday, August 20th, 2024. This campaign, which began in February, has seen hundreds of prisoners from 18 prisons across the country joining in to protest against the death penalty, which they regard as an inhumane and irreversible form of punishment.
The “No to Executions on Tuesdays” campaign has grown steadily, with more and more prisoners participating each week. The campaign’s aim is clear: to oppose the death penalty as an inhumane form of punishment and to call for its abolition. This stance is independent of the charges, motives, or beliefs of those condemned to death, focusing solely on the inhumanity of capital punishment itself.
The continuation and expansion of this campaign occur against the backdrop of the Iranian judiciary and security forces intensifying their use of the death penalty. Since the beginning of the Persian year 1403, which started on March 21, 2024, more than 310 individuals, including 16 women, have been executed in Iran. The regime has further accelerated its execution rate, with 118 people hanged in August alone.
The regime’s extensive use of the death penalty in recent times suggests a systematic approach as if those in power believe that the solution to all crises lies in the gallows. In this context, the death penalty is seen as a form of “hard revenge” against the people of Iran.
Among those affected by this brutal crackdown are women, who have long been the driving force for fundamental changes in Iran. The execution of 16 female prisoners in the past 5 months, coupled with widespread arrests and violence against women in the streets under the pretext of enforcing the government’s mandatory hijab policy, highlights the regime’s violent confrontation with women. This oppressive approach has even led to deaths and serious health consequences for many women and girls in Iran.
The Iranian regime does not execute groups of 100 or 120 people at once. Instead, it executes 120 individuals, each in isolation, leaving thousands of other prisoners in solitary confinement, awaiting their turn for execution. As prisoners in Evin and Lakan Rasht prisons have rightly pointed out, stopping this killing machine requires collective and nationwide actions and protests. Since the death penalty is a social issue implemented by the government, confronting it also requires a social response, which can only be achieved through unity and collective action.
The necessity for unity and solidarity in opposing the death penalty has been emphasized repeatedly by the prisoners participating in the “No to Executions on Tuesdays” campaign. They have called on everyone to rise however they can and support this resistance that has started within the prison walls.
According to reliable sources, the prisoners on hunger strike in the “No to Executions on Tuesdays” campaign have continued their protest for the 30th consecutive week in various prisons across the country. These include Evin Prison (Women’s Ward, Ward 4, Ward 6, and Ward 8), Ghezel Hesar Prison (Units 3 and 4), Karaj Central Prison, Khorramabad Prison, Shiraz Military Prison, Mashhad Prison, Qaem Shahr Prison, Lakan Rasht Prison (Women’s and Men’s Wards), Tabriz Prison, Ardabil Prison, Khoy Prison, Naqadeh Prison, Urmia Prison, Salmas Prison, Saqqez Prison, Baneh Prison, Mariwan Prison, and Kamyaran Prison. The strikers have appealed to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Mrs. Mai Sato, to pay special attention to these inhumane actions, particularly the executions in Iran, and to work tirelessly to stop them and end this brutal situation in the country.
Elisabetta Zamparutti, a former member of the Italian Parliament and an official of the human rights organization ‘Hands Off Cain,’ announced on August 19th her solidarity with the ‘No to Executions on Tuesdays’ campaign. She stated on her Facebook and Instagram accounts that the number of executions in Iran is continuously and dramatically increasing and that nothing changes in Iran under the rule of the Supreme Leader, regardless of who holds the presidency. Consequently, she pledged to join the hunger strike every Tuesday alongside the Iranian prisoners to protest against the executions.
(source: ncr-iran.org)
AUGUST 21, 2024:
PENNSYLVANIA:
Support bill abolishing PA’s death penalty
Editor: To protect our individual rights as Americans we need to prevent any one self-serving party from dominating the legal system. Our Founding Fathers knew this. Enshrined in the Constitution are strict definitions of the government’s responsibilities and its limitations. When the law is strong, so is our Constitution. When it is vague, individuals are allowed to make legal decisions that should be controlled by our legislators.
Right now, Pennsylvania’s death penalty is wide open to interpretation by every prosecutor with a God complex. This puts our Constitution at risk.
Let me explain. There are few strict guidelines about what makes a case eligible for the death penalty. This leaves it up to prosecutors to decide who will face the death penalty and who will not, even when people have committed the same crime. This hit home for me recently, hearing that the U.S. has just exonerated the 200th person from death row. Who is one man to decide who lives or dies in Pennsylvania? Death penalty sentences are spiking in counties depending on who they get as a district attorney, not based on their crime rates.
I’m not saying all prosecutors are bad, but this law is. The Constitution gave the responsibility of making laws strictly to the legislators. The death penalty should be the law we treat the strictest. Yet it is so unclear that district attorneys are unsure what they should use the death penalty for, if anything. People are awaiting death as we speak, and the system doesn’t give me confidence that they belong there. It is frightening to me that the law allows this and an insult to the Constitution. Join me in asking our legislators to prove their loyalty to the constitution by supporting House Bill 999 to end the death penalty.
Nancy Hardy, Albrightsville
(source: Letter to the Editor, Republican Herald)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
Death penalty to be sought for mass-murder suspect caught in Burke County
Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a mass-murder suspect who was captured in Burke County after he went on the run.
James Douglas Drayton, 26, was arrested nearly 2 years ago on suspicion of fatally shooting 5 people.
Authorities say he tried to rob a convenience store and kidnap a clerk in the early morning before he was captured.
The robber entered the Taylor Bros. X-Press on U.S. 25 north of Waynesboro, sought out the clerk at gunpoint, and took her from the kitchen to the cash register while demanding money. He made off with an undisclosed amount of money, authorities said.
Even with a mass murder suspect behind bars, a store clerk in Burke County was haunted by how close she came to dying during an encounter with him.
Officers spotted the car and chased until it wrecked near South Liberty and Manau streets and the driver fled on foot. Drayton was caught while jumping a fence during a lengthy foot chase.
The 7th Circuit Solicitor’s Office filed a motion last week expressing its plans to seek capital punishment for Drayton, according to news reports.
No trial date has been set.
Drayton was arrested in October 2022 and charged with 5 counts of murder and 5 counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime. The victims were found in a home in Inman, about 13 miles northwest of Spartanburg. Four were dead at the scene: Thomas Ellis Anderson, 37; James Derek Baldwin, 49; Mark Allen Hewitt, 59; and Adam Daniel Morley, 32. The 5th person shot, Roman Christean Megael Rocha, 19, died later at a hospital.
Drayton’s attorney, public defender Michael David Morin, declined to comment, citing the ongoing case.
At the time of Drayton’s arrest, Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said that Drayton had confessed to the killings, telling police that he was high on methamphetamine and hadn’t slept for four days. Drayton handed over the gun he said he used to kill everyone in the home where he was also staying, a place people went frequently to use drugs, Wright said.
South Carolina, 1 of 27 states that allow the death penalty, hasn’t performed an execution since 2011. A recent ruling by the South Carolina Supreme Court upholding the use of the firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair, opened the door to restart executions in the state.
(source: WRDW news)
FLORIDA—-female may face death penalty
Woman indicted in fatal ambush of Fla. deputies, may face death penalty—-Julie Ann Sulpizio, 48, was charged by a grand jury with being a principal to the 1st-degree murder of a law enforcement officer, which is punishable by execution
The mother arrested in the horrific ambush that killed a Lake County Sheriff’s deputy was indicted Monday on multiple charges and may face the death penalty.
Julie Ann Sulpizio, 48, was charged by a grand jury with being a principal to the 1st-degree murder of a law enforcement officer, which is punishable by execution. Under Florida law, principals to a crime are people who aided or abetted in its commission and can be punished as if they committed the crime themselves.
Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty, according to a press release from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
On Aug. 2, Sulpizio, who claimed to be inspired by God, attempted to lure several residents of her Eustis neighborhood whom she considered sinners into her family’s home so her husband, Michael, and daughters Cheyenne and Savannah could kill them, as she later admitted to deputies.
She attacked several neighbors at their own homes nearby, choking one and intending that they would follow her back to the Sulpizio home. When the neighbors called deputies, Julie Ann Sulpizio attempted to lure both the neighbors and deputies into her home, police say, but instead she was arrested and taken to a hospital for a mental health evaluation.
Late, when the deputies went into the Sulpizio home to check on the family, Michael Sulpizio and the daughters opened fire, leading to a standoff before eventually killing themselves. Deputy Bradley Michael Link was killed and deputies Harold Howell and Stefano Gargano were wounded.
In her later interview, Julie Ann made additional disturbing revelations. She told deputies she shot and killed her 2 dogs because they were vessels for “Lucy,” short for Lucifer, the devil; said she believes her husband is the biblical angel Michael; and claimed God is speaking through her.
Police found conspiracy theory-related materials in the Sulpizio home, they said.
In addition to the murder charge, Julie Ann Sulpizio has also been charged with 3 counts of being a principal to the attempted 1st-degree murder of a law enforcement officer, conspiracy to commit murder in the 1st-degree, battery on a law enforcement officer and 3 counts of battery.
(source: police1.com)
ALABAMA:
Gov. Ivey sets date for 5th execution this year—-Ivey has set the date of Nov. 21 for Carey Grayson’s execution, the state’s 3rd execution using nitrogen hypoxia
Governor Kay Ivey has set a Nov. 21 execution date for Carey Dale Grayson, the nation’s 3rd death sentence to use nitrogen hypoxia as the method.
Ivey announced that Grayson is scheduled for execution between midnight on Thursday, Nov. 21, and 6 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 22. Grayson, 49, will be executed by nitrogen hypoxia, a method that uses nitrogen gas administered via a gas mask, causing suffocation. This will be the 3rd nitrogen hypoxia execution planned for this year and the 5th execution overall.
Gov. Kay Ivey set the execution date for Grayson after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last week that it could take place. Grayson was one of four teenagers convicted in the killing of Vickie Deblieux in Jefferson County.
DeBlieux was kidnapped while hitchhiking. She accepted a ride from Grayson, Kenny Loggins, Trace Duncan, and Louis Mangione on Feb. 22, 1994.
Grayson, Loggins and Duncan were sentenced to death. Mangione was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Loggins and Duncan had their sentences changed to life in prison after the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that says juveniles cannot be sentenced to death.
Duncan and Magione will be eligible for parole in 2029.
While lethal injection remains the state’s primary execution method, inmates can request to be put to death by nitrogen gas or the electric chair. After testing nitrogen gas as a method to execute Smith in January, the state began seeking execution dates for the dozens of inmates who requested nitrogen as their preferred execution method.
Grayson has an ongoing lawsuit to halt the use of this protocol based on the premise that it inflicts unconstitutional levels of pain. While he did opt to use nitrogen hypoxia as his preferred method, the controversy surrounding the state’s first execution using this method raised concerns.
In January, Alabama carried out the nation’s 1st execution using nitrogen gas, resulting in Kenneth Smith’s death. A 2nd execution using nitrogen hypoxia is scheduled for Sept. 26 for Alan Eugene Miller, who recently settled a similar lawsuit with the state concerning the execution protocol.
Despite the upcoming executions, controversy over Smith’s execution is still rampant. Smith appeared to shake for several minutes on the death chamber gurney before his death on Jan. 25, contradicting the state’s claim that nitrogen gas would ensure an effective and humane death.
(source: alreporter.com)
TENNESSEE:
Oak Ridge trial could mark 1st death sentence since 2022 pause on Tennessee executions—-If sentenced to death, Sean Finnegan would join 45 people on death row during paused executions.
An Anderson County jury is currently deciding whether or not an Oak Ridge man will face death for the rape and murder of a 36-year-old woman. If the jury calls for the death penalty, Sean Finnegan will be the 1st person sentenced to death in Tennessee since 2021.
Even if sentenced to death, though, there’s no word on when Finnegan would face state-sanctioned execution. This is because executions are currently on hold in the Volunteer State.
Pausing executions for those on death row
The state paused executions in 2022, ordering an independent investigation that found the drugs used in lethal injections hadn’t been appropriately tested. That pause came shortly after another pause during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has since left more than 40 people on death row with no idea when their executions could come.
If Finnegan faces the death penalty, he’ll be the 46th person on death row in Tennessee. He’d also be the 1st person sentenced to death since the pause was implemented, following Steven Wiggins, who was sentenced in August of 2021 for 1st-degree murder.
On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Larry McKay, who was sentenced to death at the beginning of 1983 for murder. He’s been on death row for more than 41 years and has yet to be executed.
Life on death row
McKay, Wiggins and the other 43 people on death row live under maximum-security designation. More specifically, death row offenders live under 3 levels of supervision: A, B and C.
Offenders begin at Level C, and based on behavior, they are allowed to move to Level B after 18 months. They can also move up to Level A.
Moving up the levels offers those on death row more freedoms and privileges. For example, only Level A inmates are allowed to work the few jobs available to them. Moving up in the levels also gives inmates things like phone and visitation allowances.
According to state policy, all death row inmates wake up at 5:30 a.m. They’re offered three meals a day during the week and two meals a day on weekends and holidays.
All death row inmates are housed at the Riverbed Maximum Security Institution, except the state’s 1 woman who is on death row; she is housed at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville.
(source: WVLT news)
OHIO:
State senator renews call to end the death penalty in Ohio—-According to this year’s “Capital Crimes Report,” 119 inmates are sitting on Ohio’s death row. The state last carried out an execution in 2018.
Republican State Senator Michele Reynolds (R- Canal Winchester) is renewing the call to end the death penalty in Ohio. She says the time is right to have the conversation because there has been a pause on executions under Gov. Mike DeWine.
Senator Reynolds says the main reason she wants to abolish the death penalty is her belief that life is from the womb to the tomb.
“I don’t think it necessarily matters being pro-life just when we’re talking about babies,” Reynolds said. “I think being pro-life is really about life period, all life.”
Reynolds also says the death penalty does not necessarily mean closure for victims’ families.
“There have been a lot of families who have spoken about the death penalty just saying that because of the appeals and them having to relive and not really getting justice,” Reynolds said.
Companion bills in the Ohio House and Senate would abolish the death penalty and require life sentences for those convicted of aggravated murder. Just this past June, the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus pushed for them to be passed.
The bills have bi-partisan support but have not moved out of committee since being introduced in 2023.
Reynolds and House Minority Leader Allison Russo (D- Upper Arlington) say bi-partisan support continues to grow, but believe it could take a long time to make a major policy change on the death penalty.
“Based on, I think what I’ve seen and the priorities of the majority party in this state, I suspect that this is something that is going to take a number of years,” Russo said. “It’s an opportunity to have ongoing conversations, to build support in our communities because these types of efforts do require broad coalitions to get behind them.”
According to this year’s “Capital Crimes Report,” 119 inmates are sitting on Ohio’s death row. The state last carried out an execution in 2018.
DeWine has instituted an unofficial moratorium on executions citing the lack of lethal injection drugs, and has said there will be no executions while he is in office.
“Even if it takes a while for us to get this right, I mean it just seems like there’s been this stay, and we’re in limbo and I think that’s the closure we need to move this forward,” Reynolds said.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 21 states still have the death penalty. Ohio is one of 6 states that have paused executions by executive action. 23 states have no death penalty, including the Midwestern states of Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Washington, Colorado and Virginia abolished their death penalties within the last 6 years.
Reynolds believes it’s time to be in the latter group.
“I just think at this point we can join other Midwestern states and move forward in this conversation, and I think it’s a conversation worth having,” Reynolds said.
Alternative method of execution
The push to end the death penalty in Ohio comes at a time when other state lawmakers are pushing to end the unofficial moratorium on executions. One of the officials calling for nitrogen hypoxia to be used as an alternative method when lethal injection drugs are not available is Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.
“This is not something to be taken lightly,” Yost said about the death penalty in January. “At the same time, there are crimes so heinous and against humanity that they deserve the ultimate punishment.”
The push to restart the death penalty is happening in the General Assembly. House Bill 392 is currently in the House Government Oversight Committee.
This bill would allow inmates to choose to have either lethal injection or nitrogen hypoxia for their executions. If the injection drugs are not available, then nitrogen would be used.
The method suffocates the inmate by replacing the air they breathe with pure nitrogen.
(source: WBNS TV news)
Man freed from death row for ‘railroad spike’ murder after out-of-town judge upends notorious case
An Ohio death row inmate was released on house arrest while he awaits a new trial for killing a pregnant teenage mother in 1988 with a railroad spike through her head after his conviction and sentence were vacated when his lawyers said DNA in the case was not his.
David Lee Myers, 60, was released on Monday from the Greene County Courthouse with conditions that he wear a GPS monitor, not leave the state and refrain from drinking alcohol or using drugs as he awaits another trial in the killing of Amanda Jo Maher in 1988.
The victim’s daughter, Sarah Sparkman, who was 8 months old when her mother was killed, urged the judge to keep him locked up, local CBS affiliate WHIO reported.
“Why risk it? I have experienced a lifetime of emotional and psychological turmoil due to my mother’s death,” Sparkman said, the outlet reported.
Prosecutors argued to keep him in custody, citing a 1986 forgery conviction and saying at the time Maher was killed, Myers was on probation for sexual battery, the Dayton Daily News reported.
Myers’ defense attorney, Elizabeth Smith, said he’s entitled to be released in light of new evidence that she says clears him, local NBC affiliate WDTN reported. “He is entitled to the presumption of innocence,” she said, the network reported. “There’s no direct evidence here. All of the things that the state has said have been thrown out.”
Amanda Jo Maher was found by passersby fatally wounded near abandoned railroad tracks in Xenia, Ohio, at 3 a.m. on Aug. 4, 1988, according to Ohio Supreme Court documents that outline the case. She was nude except for a shirt pulled up around her neck, and she had a railroad spike through her temple. She was flown to a hospital, where she died of severe head trauma from the railroad spike and attempted strangulation, court documents said. A 23-year-old Myers, who had been seen walking with Maher in the direction of the railroad tracks shortly before her body was found, was arrested. Charges were dropped in 1991, but he was indicted again in 1993. In 1996, he was found guilty of aggravated murder and sentenced to death in 1996.
He appealed. His attorneys successfully argued in an evidentiary hearing earlier this month that DNA on the railroad spike used to kill Maher and a rock used in the attack did not match Myers’ DNA. His lawyers said in a statement he has maintained his innocence for more than 35 years and was finally granted access to DNA testing in 2020, the Dayton Daily News reported.
“The testing revealed male DNA on the railroad spike used to kill the victim and a rock used in the assault, and importantly, the results excluded Mr. Myers as the source of that DNA,” according to a statement from his lawyers in July. “Because of this newly discovered exculpatory DNA evidence, and because his conviction and death sentence were based on false, misleading and unreliable forensic science that has since been debunked by the scientific community, Mr. Myers deserves a fair, new trial where a jury can hear all of the evidence.”
Visiting Greene County Common Pleas Court Judge Jonathan Hein, a retired judge from Darke County, agreed.
“Based upon the evidence presented at the hearing, and based upon the reasonable inferences drawn therefrom, the Court finds that the Defendant’s new evidence is sufficiently reliable — in both theory and in reality — to undermine the integrity of the trial verdict,” Hein wrote in his ruling on Aug. 6, the Xenia Gazette reported.
Prosecutors have said they are appealing the judge’s ruling.
“While we respect the Court’s decision, we are deeply disappointed and disagree with the granting of a new trial in this case in addition to the Court’s decision to vacate the conviction,” Greene County Prosecuting Attorney David D. Hayes said, the newspaper reported. “Our appellate counsel is reviewing the decisions and preparing an appeal.”
(source: lawandcrime.com)
ILLINOIS:
The Exonerated: Meet Two Chicago Men Wrongly Imprisoned for Decades, on Police Torture, Death Row & More
“Tortured by Blue: The Chicago Police Torture Story”
As Chicago hosts the 2024 Democratic National Convention, we look at the city’s long history of police misconduct, including the use of torture under police commander Jon Burge, accused of leading a torture ring that interrogated more than 100 African American men in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s using electric shocks and suffocation, among other methods, to extract false confessions from men who were later exonerated. Illinois has one of the highest rates of wrongful convictions in the United States, and a disproportionate number of the wrongfully convicted are Black or Brown people. For more, we speak with 2 men from Chicago who were exonerated after serving decades in prison: Stanley Howard spent 16 years of his life on death row for a 1984 murder that he confessed to after being tortured; Jimmy Soto was released from an Illinois prison in December after a 42-year fight to prove his innocence.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: “All the King’s Horses,” Aretha Franklin, here on Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we broadcast from here in Chicago at CAN TV.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we look now at how the city has a long history of police torture under police commander Jon Burge, who is accused of leading a torture ring that interrogated more than 100 African American men in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s. They routinely used electric shock and suffocation with plastic bags and typewriter covers, among other methods, to extract confessions from men who were later shown to be innocent. This comes as Illinois has one of the highest rates of wrongful convictions in the United States, and a disproportionate number of the wrongly convicted are Black or Brown people.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by 2 men from right here in Chicago who were exonerated after serving decades in prison.
Stanley Howard spent 16 years of his life on death row for a 1984 murder that evidence would later show he did not commit. He says he was tortured until he confessed to the crime. He’s the co-founder of the Death Row 10, a group of Black men on Illinois’s death row who were tortured by the notorious Chicago police commander Jon Burge and his detectives. Howard was pardoned by Governor George Ryan in 2003. He co-authored the book Tortured by Blue: The Chicago Police Torture Story.
We’re also joined by Jimmy Soto, who was released from an Illinois prison just this past December 14th, after a 42-year fight to prove his innocence. At the time of his release, Jimmy Soto was the longest-serving exonerated prisoner in Illinois history. Now he’s working on getting a law degree to help others like him.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! It’s an honor to have you with us, as you both actually just recently got out. I don’t know if people remember what happened in the exposé, and he even went to court and was convicted of perjury, lying about the cover-up of torture of Black men in Chicago, Jon Burge. But you were one of those victims. If you can talk about what happened to you and what it meant to serve more than 40 years [sic] in prison, Stanley Howard?
STANLEY HOWARD: Well, what happened to me was a crime. I was tortured on November the 1st, November the 2nd of 1984. What I mean by “torture,” I was handcuffed with my hands behind my back, and that set of cuffs was cuffed to a ring on the wall. And these 3 detectives literally beat the heck out of me. When I refused to sign a confession to a crime I did not commit, they suffocated me with a plastic bag, and later a typewriter cover. I thought these three white detectives were actually trying to kill me. Mind you, I was 21 years old. Scared half to death and in fear of losing my life inside this interview room at 3:30, 4:00 in the morning, I actually agreed to sign a confession to a crime I did not commit.
I later discovered, when evidence started coming out, that I was not the only one. And at that time, I was assured that justice was going to prevail. I did not know that all three branches of government was either complicit in this scandal or worked to cover it up or just simply turned a blind eye to what was going on, maybe because they didn’t care. As long as they was obtaining convictions, that’s all it was about.
I end up on death row. And the courts kept seeing cases after cases after cases of these same officers’ names and the same techniques, but they kept denying all of the appeals. So, I wanted to take the argument from behind the closed doors of death row, and I wanted to take it to the streets. I wanted the people. If the people was willing to hear our stories and allow the state of Illinois to execute us, so be it. So I started the Death Row 10. And that campaign, we reached out to the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, and they helped us facilitate a public fight, if you will. And based on that, we started getting more movement, more movement, especially with Anthony Porter, who was released from death row after spending years and years on death row and was 30-some hours away from being executed. This is the time that we started the Death Row 10, along with the time that LaTanya Haggerty, a young girl that was killed by Chicago police because she had a cellphone in her hands.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you, actually, while the time you were in prison, you became a jailhouse lawyer, helping so many other inmates. Can you talk about the experiences that you had there, helping to mount the legal arguments and the basis for yourself and others eventually being freed?
STANLEY HOWARD: Well, I had the experience of working with my appellate lawyer, who was horrible, so I started studying criminal law myself. I didn’t get any formal education, but I trained, and I studied, and I studied, and I studied. And I got to the point to where I wanted to have a say in my life, my appeals. And I believe I got to the point to where I wanted to help other guys on death row also, which is why I started the law class, so-called law class.
And based on the law class, we was able to get together, formulate arguments, organize, and push our fight, not just for the Death Row 10, but to counter the claims of the death penalty here in Illinois. At one point, we had 12, 13 guys executed, but we had 12, 13 guys released from death row. So, that tells you something is wrong. And through my advocacy, it wasn’t just simply about me. I wanted to help the other guys that I was there with, to help save their lives also, because I believe a government like this government should not be in the business of executing people, under any circ*mstances.
AMY GOODMAN: You were on death row for how many years?
STANLEY HOWARD: 16 years.
AMY GOODMAN: 16 years.
STANLEY HOWARD: Locked inside of a cell 23, 24 hours a day, every day, tortured. So, I was tortured by cops. Then I was tortured by the state of Illinois.
AMY GOODMAN: And now you’re free. Former Republican Governor George Ryan, governor of Illinois, commuted 167 prisoners on death row to life in prison. And then you have, before that, the — after that, in 2011, Democratic Governor Pat Quinn signed legislation that made Illinois the 16th state to abolish the death penalty. Jimmy Soto, I want to turn to you. Congratulations on being out, but the horror that you were in for over 40 years, the longest-held prisoner — exonerated prisoner in this country. Tell us your story.
JIMMY SOTO: Well, you know, it happened in 1981 on the Southwest Side of Chicago in an area called Little Village. A tragic shooting occurred. And I gave it no thought that it would ever come on my doorstep. Unfortunately, the police, as Stanley was pointing out, in that time period, used tactics in which they wanted to just close the case. And so, being pressured by those in authority in the city of Chicago, they set out to try to just solve the case in a way that skirted any legal methods that they should have done. They rounded up approximately 25 people from that area, 20 of which were under the age of 17. So, just think of that. These are juveniles. Held them for 3 days and got them to make false statements on me. They took them to the grand jury, and, yeah, they put the case on me. There was no evidence, physical, forensic, no eyewitnesses. They managed to get one individual to stand up and be, what they say, quote-unquote, an “accomplice witness.”
And at years of fighting, like Stanley, I was self-taught prison litigator. Over the course of that time, I managed to get two people fully exonerated. And I was able to get over 300 sentence reductions and 14 new trials. But, you know, the actual fight was to get me out. And eventually that happened. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t an easy task. And I never want to see anybody go through that.
Unfortunately, like as you indicated, Juan, at the beginning of the show, that Illinois has some of the highest numbers of exonerations. I went to an exoneration conference in Louisiana shortly after I was released. And by far, Illinois, in just a year, one year, exceeded any other state for exonerations. And when I looked at the whole room and seen those thousands of people that have been exonerated over the years, it’s a clear red flag that there’s something seriously wrong with our criminal justice system.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And also, Illinois is a state that does not have parole for folks who are in prison. Can you talk about that and what that does —
JIMMY SOTO: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — in terms of people staying in longer?
JIMMY SOTO: Yes, yes. I was sentenced to natural life without parole, which is a slow death by incarceration. And during that time in there, we started — I was going to school. I went to the Northwestern Prison Education Program, but I also joined PNAP, the Prison Neighborhood Arts Project. And there, there was a think tank. And in that think tank, individuals said, “Hey, there is no parole in Illinois. We need to do something about it.” And right there, there was an effort birthed, which we wanted to have, ParoleIllinois.org. And we formed a nonprofit organization to bring back parole. There’s been no parole in Illinois since 1978. And there’s a lot of people who have, quote-unquote, “been rehabilitated,” yet they linger for decades in the most horrible conditions. Because it’s not only the fact that I did 42 years, two months, two days; it’s the conditions in which I did it. As Stanley indicated, it is really slow torture every day.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you mentioned also, in the discussions we had yesterday, that you also were organizing within the prison in terms of the Latino prisoners. For a while you spent time with some of the FALN pro-independence folks that were in prison, as well?
JIMMY SOTO: That’s correct. You know, Luis Rosa, in particular. As I said, there was programs giving you higher education, but they had nothing to show to give us an education about our history, Latinos. And so, we decided to formulate the Latino Cultural Exchange Committee, which was an independent program, which we now started to bring in the history of Puerto Rico, Mexico, Central America, South America, and bringing it to those and to awaken within them some dignity and some pride in their heritage.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the case of 51-year-old Michael Broadway, who died just this past June in Stateville prison? Just the year before, he was one of your classmates who were among the first group of incarcerated men to receive a bachelor’s degree from a top 10 university, Northwestern?
JIMMY SOTO: Yeah. Well, Michael was not only a cohort, but a friend. And when I learned about his death in June, it really hit me hard, because it shouldn’t have happened. The conditions there were [un]inhabitable. An independent engineering report, that the IDOC was aware of, said that 6 of the prisons in Illinois were not fit to have human beings in there. And so, Michael was in one of those prisons, Stateville. He was on one of the highest galleries, and it was very warm. It was hot. I was over 100 degrees, no circulation, windows sealed shut. Michael had an asthma attack and, unfortunately, died.
And when I learned that that happened, I held a town hall meeting here in Chicago. And there was — another organization was born. A movement was birthed in that. I said, “I’m going to do something about this and bring awareness of what’s going on.” And I called it Building Communities Not Prisons, to not let Michael’s death be in vain. And so, we pushed really hard to get Stateville closed. And I’m glad to say that, finally, a federal court judge ordered Stateville closed by September 30th.
But it doesn’t end there. The women in Logan are also subjected to horrible conditions. And we’re pushing to get that closed, and all of those prisons closed. The IDOC is operating at only 60%. That means they’ve got 40% room. But yet they want to knock down Stateville and Logan and rebuild a new prison at a cost of $900 million. And my question is: Why can’t we take that $900 million and put it at the front end to prevent people coming to prison, as opposed to investing in the future that we’re saying we’re going to continue this nightmare of mass incarceration?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you talk about conditions, could you talk about what those conditions are? Even the water supply in many of these prisons is toxic?
JIMMY SOTO: Yes, yes. It’s been really noted that they know, that these antiquated prisons, for one, the plumbing, the piping has got lead pipes, so that means the lead is going to be in the water. But even the sources, the sources like the aquifers that are there in Will County, in Joliet, the sources where they get the water that is ran to the prison, it also has heavy metals, other toxins which is in the water, which is causing it. I personally had my blood tested, and I had elevated levels of lead, caused by drinking that water in Stateville.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’ve been invited to the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night?
JIMMY SOTO: Yes, by a group called FWD.us. And I’m going to go there and meet some people. And they are a group who wants to show how immigration right now, which is a hot-topic issue, and carceral systems are intertwined, you know, because now they want to criminalize. They want to criminalize Black and Brown bodies. And this is a way to further criminalize through saying these migrants that are coming in are, quote-unquote, “bad hombres,” bad people.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Stanley, I wanted to ask you — the Democratic National Convention is about to nominate a former prosecutor, Kamala Harris, as the Democratic candidate for president. Your sense of the continued emphasis, even among the Democrats, on punishment and incarceration as a means of dealing with crime?
STANLEY HOWARD: Well, I’d like to also say that the mental health service inside the prison is terrible. The healthcare is terrible. And all the buildings are crazy. I did a protest out in front of Cook County Jail a couple of weeks ago. And I looked at this building, where the prosecutor’s office was at. Mind you, when you say that Cook County is the wrongful conviction capital of the world, somebody had to be involved in that. It was the prosecutors. They all got away with it, and still getting away with it.
Kamala Harris, I do not know much about her history as a prosecutor, but knowing that there is a prosecutor at the helm of our government, and she is going to reach back and tell these prosecutors their number one job is to seek justice and not convictions, I don’t know about that. I have many questions for her about her life as a prosecutor.
But I also would like to know what she’s going to do to reform this system. From the time when they used to call, quote-unquote, the “war on drugs,” the “war on crime,” and this “get tough on crime,” to where, as we know, the crime has continued to falling, and all these dramatic rulings and bills that they put in place, what about rolling those back now? What is she going to do for that effort?
And that’s why I’m here now. Since I’ve been out, I’m working at Uptown People’s Law Center, who does great work for those on the inside. And I receive telephone calls from family members. I answer the guys on the inside’s mail also. And to know that prosecutors are at the helm of this mass incarceration — Jimmy said there was thousands of people that was wrongly convicted at this convention that he was at. Prosecutors prosecuted their cases. And like I said in my book, Tortured by Blue, the problem with prosecutors is that it takes a prosecutor to prosecute a prosecutor, but prosecutors are not in the business of prosecuting prosecutors.
AMY GOODMAN: 24 states allow the death penalty. 23 states have abolished capital punishment altogether. 3 states — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have governor-issued moratoriums in place halting executions in the state. We’re almost at the point where more than 1/2 of the states in this country will have abolished the death penalty. And then the argument will be, overall, in terms of getting rid of it, that it is cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. is very rare in the industrialized world in continuing with the death penalty. Your thoughts on this, Stanley, as a man who might have been executed, if it weren’t for your activism and your community that fought for you until ultimately you were exonerated?
STANLEY HOWARD: Well, it’s kind of ironic that the conservative party is for life on the front end, but they are for death on the back end. I do not understand that philosophy. But we have a guy by the name of Murray Hooper, who was transferred from Illinois’s death row to Arizona. It’s amazing that half of Arizonans do not trust their government, so much so they don’t even trust the election. But he was executed last year. So, the government is in the business of executing people but can’t get their elections right. I believe that a country that executes its citizens really do not have the moral compass to tell another country nowhere around this planet what to do. It was once said that if you wanted to know what is going on in a country, all you had to do is look inside the prisons and look inside of the death row. And we have to end this death penalty in this country, and we have to end life without the possibility of parole also.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. It has been so important. Do you think, when it comes to the Democratic and Republican leaders of this country, that it makes a difference who is in power? I’ll end with you, Jimmy.
JIMMY SOTO: Absolutely, it does. I mean, we have to get a Democrat in there. Kamala may not be the best candidate, but we need to get out there and vote, because the only other alternative is Trump. And I think Trump will turn this country upside down to where we’re going to probably go back 10, 15 years of progress that we’ve made, not only economically, but even within our carceral system. There needs to be a change. There needs to be a change now.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank both of you again. Jimmy Soto, longest-serving exonerated prisoner in Illinois history. Since his release in December, he’s been working on going to law school, getting a law degree to help others like him. And Stanley Howard, co-founder of Death Row 10, spent 16 years of his life on death row for a 1984 murder that evidence would later show he did not commit.
(source: democracynow.org)
MISSOURI—-impending execution
Ex-Barry County sheriff says death penalty justified for Rowan Ford’s killer
Throughout his law enforcement career, former Barry County Sheriff Mick Epperly says there’s only 1 case that stands apart from the others.
Crime Traveler: What happened to Rowan Ford?
The 2007 kidnapping and murder of 9-year-old Rowan Ford.
The state announced that Rowan’s killer, Christopher Collings, will face the death penalty on December 3, 2024.
“It’s one of those cases that you never forget,” Epperly said.
In November 2007, Rowan went missing from her home in the middle of the night in Newton County.
She was raped and strangled, then her body was left in a cave in McDonald County. She was found nearly a week after she was killed.
“It was terrible,” Epperly said. “And for someone to take a life and throw them down into a cave, like a piece of dirt, it’s terrible.”
Collings admitted to local police he was drinking heavily the night he went into Rowan’s room and took her back to his trailer.
Court documents show in his confession, he said he raped her and was going to take her home, when she saw his face. That’s when he decided to use a rope and strangle her.
Epperly tells OzarksFirst he feels justice has been served.
In 2012, the case went to trial, where the jury found Collings guilty of 1st-degree murder.
“Nothing is going to bring that little sweet little girl back,” Epperly said. “And she didn’t deserve any of this.”
Rowan would be 26 years old if she were alive today.
“It’ll give some satisfaction to that family that maybe he got what he deserved,” Epperly said.
(source: ozarksfirst.com)
UTAH:
Honie execution cost Utah Department of Corrections over $280,000
It cost over $280,000 for the Utah Department of Corrections to execute Taberon Dave Honie, according to a cost breakdown released Tuesday.
Corrections officials executed Honie by lethal injection Aug. 8 at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City.
“Medical services and supplies” cost an estimated $260,906.58. The vast majority of that — as well as the biggest overall cost of the execution — came from the purchase of pentobarbital. In July, the department indicated in court documents that it was abandoning its original plan to execute Honie using an experimental co*cktail consisting of ketamine, fentanyl, and potassium chloride, and instead had purchased doses of pentobarbital for an estimated $200,000.
Other medical supply expenses included IV lines, an EKG monitor and the execution team itself, according to a corrections spokesman.
In addition to medical services and supplies, personnel and overtime for corrections employees cost $10,973.86, while “event expenses” which are described as “supplies and equipment,” cost $16,804.85, bringing the total to $288,685.29. Other event expenses included lights and port-a-potties at the free speech zone, road signs, roadblocks and food for officers.
The funds to pay for the execution come from the Utah Department of Corrections general budget. The department does not receive any special additional funds to carry out a death sentence.
The total price released Tuesday does not include the numerous years of appeals and legal costs associated with a death sentence. According to the Death Penalty Information Center: “The death penalty is far more expensive than a system utilizing life-without-parole sentences as an alternative punishment.”
(source: kslnewsradio.com)
USA:
New Analysis from The Appeal Finds Anti-LGBTQ+ Bias Affects the Fate of Defendants in Death Penalty Cases
LGBTQ+ People Prosecutorial Accountability
An analysis from The Appeal of more than 2 dozen cases in which LGBTQ+ defendants faced the death penalty found evidence that anti-LGBTQ+ bias affected case outcomes. After an examination of media reports, academic journals, and legal documents, The Appeal determined that these cases are likely a significant undercount of the number of LGBTQ+ people sentenced to death. “These capital cases illustrate the ingrained anti-LGBTQ+ bias endemic to the U.S. legal system—from sodomy laws that punished same-sex activity to those that now criminalize gender-affirming care for trans people,” according to the report. Not only do these cases exemplify the impact of anti-LGBTQ+ bias, but also show “the ways the legal system often bends over backward to avoid scrutiny of accountability.”
The Appeal notes the case of Calvin Burdine—a gay man tried in Texas in 1984 for the murder of his male partner. Though Mr. Burdine’s case is better known as the “sleeping lawyer” case because his trial attorney slept through much of the trial, Mr. Burdine’s case featured repeated instances of hom*ophobia and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. Mr. Burdine’s court-appointed attorney used anti-gay slurs about his own client, and Ned Morris, the prosecutor, also made several troubling statements regarding Mr. Burdine’s sexuality. In urging the jury to sentence Mr. Burdine to death, Mr. Morris argued against an alternate sentence of a term in prison because “sending a hom*osexual to the penitentiary certainly isn’t a very bad punishment for a hom*osexual,” adding that it would be a “paradise” for Mr. Burdine and “like setting a kid loose in a candy store.” Mr. Burdine was convicted and sentenced to death. In 2003, nearly 20 years after his initial conviction, Mr. Burdine reached an agreement with the state to remove his death sentence in exchange for pleading guilty to other charges. He received multiple life sentences and is still incarcerated.
Mr. Burdine’s case bears an unfortunate resemblance to other cases of death-sentenced LGBTQ+ people. In South Dakota in 1993, Charles Rhines was sentenced to death, and jurors later told defense attorneys they expressed “a lot of disgust” during deliberations about the fact that Mr. Rhines was gay. Some jurors wondered whether Mr. Rhines would enjoy being in prison with other men because he was gay and sent questions to the judge on this subject that the judge refused to answer. Mr. Rhines raised the evidence of anti-LBGTQ+ bias in his case in multiple appeals. Ethan Rice, an attorney with Lambda Legal, filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Rhines, urging appellate courts to allow for investigation into claims of juror anti-LGBTQ+ bias, as they do for claims of juror racial bias, but Mr. Rhines was executed in November 2019.
The bias of judges has also affected the fairness of court proceedings for LGBTQ+ people. In Gregory Dickens’ case, the judge’s bigotry was personal. Mr. Dickens, who was gay, was tried for the murder of a couple, yet it was acknowledged that Mr. Dickens’ 16-year-old companion pulled the trigger. Judge Tom Cole sentenced Mr. Dickens to death under Arizona’s law at the time that allowed for judges, not juries, to issue death sentences. Evidence emerged that Judge Cole regularly wrote “violent” and hateful letters to his son Scott, who was also gay. In one letter, Judge Cole wrote to his son, “I hope you die in prison like all the rest of your f—got friends.” It was not until after Mr. Dickens was sentenced to death that his attorneys learned about Judge Cole’s bias. Attorneys for Mr. Dickens urged a court to review whether another judge should have overseen post-conviction proceedings. A state court judge rejected Mr. Dickens’ arguments, writing that “Dickens offers no evidence that begins to suggest, much less constitute a colorable claim, that the judge in this case was biased against him.” Superior Court Judge Michael Cruikshank wrote that “the affidavits suggest, at most, that the judge may have had a difficult relationship with his son.” In January 2014, a federal appellate court granted Mr. Dickens a new hearing to raise ineffective assistance of counsel claims, but days later, Mr. Dickens died on death row of apparent suicide.
While some LGBTQ+ men are wrongfully portrayed as “sexual deviants,” LGBTQ+ women have been criminalized for their perceived violation of gender norms. Hugh Ryan, a queer historian and author, told The Appeal that “when we get into the 19th century, and we start to see these laws appearing that criminalize hom*osexuality, they focus on men. But what we’re actually seeing is that women had been already criminalized much more extensively for their queerness than men had been, just earlier, without using that language.” Prosecutors often portray LGBTQ+ “women as masculine, violent, and aggressive to secure death sentences.” For LGBTQ+ women of color, these biases often intersect with racist tropes. In 1989, Wanda Jean Allen was accused of killing her girlfriend Gloria Leathers in Oklahoma. At trial, the state told the jury that Ms. Allen was the “man” and “wore the pants” in her relationship with Ms. Leathers, who they portrayed as “passive and submissive.” Ms. Allen was sentenced to death without the jury hearing important mitigating evidence surrounding severe head trauma and intellectual disability. Activists launched a campaign to free Ms. Allen, but she was executed in 2001—the 1st Black woman put to death in nearly 50 years.
The Appeal believes that these cases “illuminate a fundamental flaw—or feature—of the U.S. death penalty system.” Mr. Rice, of Lambda Legal, said that “it shows we don’t have enough safeguards to ensure that everyone actually has an opportunity to have a fair trial.” As written in Queer (In)Justice, a book that examines how LGBTQ+ people are criminalized, “the process of dehumanization required to obtain a death sentence is easier when the defendant is of a different race, class, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity than the jurors or judge.” The authors add that “the prosecutor’s task is also greatly facilitated when the accused belongs to a class of people stigmatized as abnormal, violent, sexually degenerate and pathological.” Because of this, many LGBTQ+ advocates have continuously called for the abolition of the death penalty. Mr. Rice says that “in every case of an LGBTQ+ person, there is such a high risk of getting it wrong that there’s no way to support the death penalty.”
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
BANGLADESH:
Man awarded death penalty for killing woman, her son
A man was awarded the death sentence by a court here today for killing a woman and her 10-year old son in the town in 2012.
Additional District and Sessions Judge Md Moklesur Rahman handed down the verdict to Sumon Sarker alias Titu, an inhabitant of Narayanganj district.
According to the prosecution story, in brief, the convict Sumon Sarker killed the woman Nita Sarker Pinki, 25, and her son Joytu Sarker Turja, 10, by a sharper weapon over previous enmity on December 17 in 2012.
Following the murder, Pinki’s husband, who was a bank employee, filed a case with Naogaon Sadar Model Thana the next day. Sumon Sarker was a relative of Joyonto Kumar Sarker.
On June 15 in 2013, police pressed the charge sheet accusing Sumon Sarker.
Testifying witnesses and evidence, the court gave the verdict, said Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) Md Samsur Rahman.
(source: bssnews.net)
Slogans for death penalty resonate in court corridors as Dipu Moni weeps—-Pro-BNP lawyers chant for execution as former ministers appear in court
Former social welfare minister Dipu Moni and former deputy youth and sports minister Arif Khan Joy have appeared in court amidst chants from pro-BNP lawyers demanding their execution, with Dipu breaking down in tears during the remand hearing.
The 2 were presented in court on Tuesday after their arrest in connection with the murder of grocery shop owner Abu Sayed.
Inspector Tofazzal Hossain of Mohammadpur Police Station requested a 10-day remand for both.
Dhaka Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sultan Shohag Uddin granted a four-day remand for Dipu and a 5-day remand for Joy.
No lawyers appeared for the defendants, and no bail was requested.
However, a pro-BNP lawyer advocated for their release ar the hearing.
The courtroom was packed with pro-BNP lawyers and some outsiders.
Dipu and Joy were brought to the Magistrates Court at 3:25pm and placed in the court’s lockup.
Later, they were presented in courtroom number 28 on the second floor of the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrates Court.
Pro-BNP lawyers shouted slogans demanding the death penalty for the accused.
They also pleaded for a 10-day remand and shouted “killer” during the hearing, applying pressure on the court to handcuff Dipu in the dock.
Omar Farook Farooki, the leader of the BNP lawyers’ organisation, said into the courtroom microphone: “The male accused has handcuffs. Please remain calm.”
The investigating officer, Tofazzal, argued for a 10-day remand, citing the accused’s alleged involvement in the quota protest killings and the need to uncover further details and connections.
The judge asked if there were any representatives for the defence, but no Awami League lawyer was present.
Pro-BNP lawyer Ataur Rahman then spoke, requesting bail for both defendants.
During the hearing, Dipu continued to weep, and while Joy tried to speak with the court’s permission, his words were drowned by the uproar from BNP supporters.
After another round of protests, the judge granted remand, swiftly leaving the courtroom amid the ongoing outcry.
After the judge’s departure, a female lawyer attempted to attack Dipu in the dock, but police intervened.
Pro-BNP lawyers continued their protests from the court benches.
After being trapped in the dock for nearly 15 minutes, police escorted Dipu and Joy to the court’s detention facility under tight security.
Their arrest came amid a series of cases and arrests involving Awami League ministers and MPs following the government’s fall.
The case was filed on Aug 13 by Amir Hamza Shatil, listing former prime minister Sheikh Hasina and five others as defendants.
It includes Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader, former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan, former inspector general of police Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, and others.
In addition, several unnamed high-ranking police officers and other government officials are implicated.
The case dossier said police fired on protesters during the Anti-discrimination Student Movement on Jul 19, leading to the death of Sayed.
(source: bdnews24.com)
9 get death sentence for killing Saidar in Pabna
A Rajshahi court today sentenced 9 people to death and 5 others to life imprisonment for killing Awami League leader Saidar Malitha in Pabna. The court also acquitted 7 people in the same case.
Judge Mahiduzzaman of the Rajshahi Speedy Trial Tribunal announced this verdict on Tuesday (August 20) at noon.
The death sentence awardees are former chairman of Hemayetpur Union Parishad and vice president of Sadar Upazila Awami League Alauddin Malitha, Swapan Malitha, Ripon Khan, Ashiq Malitha, Rakib Malitha, Yasin Arafat Isti, Ranju Malitha, Johnny Malitha and Alif Malitha. All of them are from Pabna district.
The life sentence awardees are Dulal Malitha, Ruju Malitha, Ayanal Malitha, Sanju Malitha and Belal Hossain Ujjal.
Rajshahi speedy trial tribunal court lawyer Entazul Haque Babu confirmed this information.
He said, Saidar Malitha and Alauddin Malitha are two brothers. They quarrel with each other over money. Later the elder brother gave a slap to the younger brother. Following this dispute, the younger brother plans to kill him. On September 9, 2022, at around 1 pm, Saidar Malitha was having tea at Najur intersection of Char Bangabaria, Hemayetpur Union of Pabna Sadar Upazila. At that time 6-7 terrorists cordoned him and shot and hacked him to death. The deceased Saidar Malitha is the son of Haran Malitha of Char Pratappur Kablipara of Hemayetpur. He was an active member of the Pabna Municipal Awami League.
Later, a case was filed in that incident. The court announced the verdict in that case on Tuesday. The accused were present in the court when the verdict was announced.
(source: daily-bangladesh.com)
MALAYSIA:
Unemployed man charged in Muar with murder of parents, niece in Pagoh; faces death penalty if convicted
An unemployed man was charged in the Magistrates’ Court today with the murder of his elderly parents and a niece in a house in Kampung Paya Redan, Pagoh, on August 9.
Azman Mohamed Nor, 48, nodded in acknowledgement after the 3 charges were read separately before Magistrate Suzana Mokhtar.
However, no plea was recorded as murder cases fall under the jurisdiction of the High Court.
He is accused of murdering his mother, Ara Ab Hamit, 76; his father, Mohamed Nor Mohamed Yassin, 82; and his niece, Noradriana Nor Hasyim, 11, between 1am and 3am on August 9.
The charges are framed under Section 302 of the Penal Code, which carries the death penalty, which can be commuted to a jail term between 30 and 40 years, and whipping of no fewer than 20 strokes of the cane.
The court has set October 24 for the re-mention of the case to obtain forensic, post-mortem, and chemical reports.
Meanwhile, at the Sessions Court here, Azman pleaded guilty to the charge of intentionally causing serious injury to his 14-year-old niece, Norazmina Mohd Razi, by using a wooden stick as a weapon capable of causing death.
The incident is alleged to have occurred at the same location, time, and day as the murders. The charge is framed under Section 326 of the Penal Code, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison, along with fines or whipping, upon conviction.
Judge Nariman Badruddin set September 12 for sentencing while awaiting the prosecution to finalise the case facts.
Azman was denied bail due to his involvement in the 3 murder charges.
Deputy public prosecutors Mohamad Arif Marzuki and Danial Munir appeared for the prosecution while Azman was unrepresented.
Previously, the media reported that an elderly couple, Mohamed Nor and Ara, together with their granddaughter, Noradriana, died in a fire in a house in Kampung Paya Redan, Pagoh at about 1.30 that morning, while another victim, Norazmina, was seriously injured in the incident and receiving treatment at the Sultanah Fatimah Specialist Hospital (HPSF) here.
Muar district police chief ACP Raiz Mukhliz Azman Aziz reportedly said that the police were tracking down the main witness known as Azman who is also the son of the elderly couple who is said to be living with the victims after he was believed to have disappeared after the incident.
(source: malaymail.com)
IRAN—-executions
85+ Executions in 20 Days; IHRNGO Urges International Solidarity With “No Death Penalty Tuesdays“ Movement
At least 85 people were executed in the last 20 days in Iran. As execution numbers continue to rise, the weekly mass hunger strikes by political prisoners against the death penalty which have been ongoing for 30 weeks and continue to spread to different prisons. Various forms of civil protests against the death penalty have also continued throughout Iran.
Expressing its support for “No Death Penalty Tuesdays,” Iran Human Rights urges mass support for the campaign to stop the Islamic Republic’s killing machine.
IHRNGO Director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “A sustained campaign and public mass movement against the death penalty is the only way to stop the Islamic Republic’s execution machine and abolish this inhumane punishment. Now, prisoners who are witnesses to their fellow inmates’ executions, are leading this movement from behind bars.” He added: “The Islamic Republic is the world’s largest executioner per capita, and the 30 weeks of anti-death penalty strikes have put Iran in the frontline of the struggle against the death penalty! We call on the public and abolitionist organisations around the world to support the brave activists by showing solidarity to the “No Death Penalty Tuesday” strikes.”
According to data collected by IHRNGO researchers, the Islamic Republic has executed at least 85 people including a “Woman, Life, Freedom” protester and 8 Afghan nationals in August in Ghezlhesar, Karaj, Yasuj, Minab, Zahedan, Mashhad, Gorgan, Kerman, Bam, Rafsanjan, Arak, Sabzevar, Zahedan, Tabriz, Isfahan, Khorramabad, Bushehr, Kermanshah, Shiraz, Qazvin, Bandarabbas, Zanjan and Khaf prisons.
The ”No Death Penalty Tuesdays” movement was started by Ghezelhesar political prisoners. The 1st hunger strike took place on 30 January 2024 in what became known as “Black Tuesdays” after prison officials cracked down on protests against the execution of political prisoners at the prison. 30 weeks later, the strikes now take place in 18 Iranian prisons including Ghezelhesar, Evin, Karaj Penitentiary, Shiraz, Khoy, Tabriz, Khorramabad, Lakan, Naghdeh, Marivan, Ardabil, Salmas, Baneh, Ghaemshahr, Saqqez and Mashhad prisons on a weekly basis.
In a statement issued to mark the 30th week of strikes, the political prisoners called on the public inside and outside Iran to stand against the death penalty and support the “No Death Penalty Tuesdays” campaign in any way they can.
As well as the Tuesday strikes, another wave of anti-death penalty protests took place after the execution of Kurdish protester Reza Rasayi in Kermanshah Central Prison on 6 August. On the same day, the women political prisoners in Evin Prison joined the weekly strikes by gathering in the prison yard and chanting against Reza Rasayi’s execution. They called for the abolition of the death penalty and for the death sentences against political prisoners to be overturned. Prison guards violently attacked the women’s gathering, injuring Narges Mohammadi, Nasrin Javadi, Sarvenaz Ahmadi, Samaneh Asghari, Varshieh Moradi and Reyhaneh Ansarinejad.
On 19 August, 43 human rights activists and human rights and women’s rights organisation heads signed a joint statement in solidarity with the women political prisoners in Tehran’s Evin Prison whose protest against the execution of protester Reza Rasaei was brutally repressed.
Furthermore, the women prisoners in Rasht Central Prison have joined the anti-death penalty campaign.
Mehdi Piri and Mazaher Ayouzi Executed in Zanjan
Mehdi Piri and Mazaher Ayouzi were executed for drug-related and murder charges in Zanjan Central Prison.
According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, 2 men were executed in Zanjan Central Prison on 19 August. Their identities have been established as 31-year-old Mehdi Piri (photo) from Shirvan and 35-year-old Mazaher Ayouzi, a father of 1.
Mehdi Piri was arrested for drug-related offences around 2 years ago and sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court. Mazaher Ayouzi was arrested for murder charges around 3 years ago and sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) by the Criminal Court.
At the time of writing, their executions have not been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran.
Drug-related executions have continuously risen every year since 2021. According to IHRNGO’s 2023 Annual Report on the Death Penalty, at least 471 people were executed for drug-related charges, an 84% increase compared to 2022 (256) and about 18 times the average of drug-related executions in 2018-2020. In the first 6 months of 2024, at least 147 people were executed for the charges.
3 Men Executed in Shiraz; Fourth Man Obtained Last Minute Extension
Yousef Kazemzadeh, Ali Salimi and Heydar Arab were executed for drug-related and murder charges in Shiraz Central Prison.
According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, 3 men were executed in Shiraz (Adel Abad) Central Prison on 17 August. 2 of the men who were on death row for drug-related charges have been identified as Yousef Kazemzaedeh and Ali Salimi. The other man who was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder, was identified as Heydar Arab.
They were transferred to solitary confinement in preparation for their executions in a group of 4 on 14 August. The 4th man, Morteza Ardakani was returned to his cell after obtaining a two-month extension from the plaintiffs in his murder case.
An informed source told IHRNGO: “Ali Salimi and Yousef Kazemzadeh were transferred to Shiraz Central Prison for their execution from Pirbanu Prison. Ali had been arrested for carrying 100 kg of heroine around 2 years ago. Yousef was also arrested for drug offences around 4 years ago.”
“Heidar Arab was arrested for murder during a street group fight 3 years ago,” the source added.
At the time of writing, their executions have not been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran.
Drug-related executions have continuously risen every year since 2021. According to IHRNGO’s 2023 Annual Report on the Death Penalty, at least 471 people were executed for drug-related charges, an 84% increase compared to 2022 (256) and about 18 times the average of drug-related executions in 2018-2020. In the first 6 months of 2024, at least 147 people were executed for the charges.
2 Afghans and 2 Baluch Executed in Yazd
2 Afghan nationals named Ansar Eftekhareddin and Mahmoud Salim, and two Baluch minorities named Abdolraouf Shehbakhsh and Abdolrahman Damani were executed for drug-related and murder charges in Yazd Central Prison.
According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, 4 men were executed in Yazd Central Prison on 19 August. 2 of the men who were Afghan nationals and sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder, have been identified as Ansar Eftekhareddin and Mahmoud Salim.
The other 2 men who were Baluch minorities and on death row for drug-related charges have been identified as 33-year-old Abdolraouf Shehbakhsh (Dahmardeh) and 34-year-old Abdolrahman Damani (Gorgij).
At the time of writing, their executions have not been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran.
Drug-related executions have continuously risen every year since 2021. According to IHRNGO’s 2023 Annual Report on the Death Penalty, at least 471 people were executed for drug-related charges, an 84% increase compared to 2022 (256) and about 18 times the average of drug-related executions in 2018-2020. In the first 6 months of 2024, at least 147 people were executed for the charges.
Statement by 43 Human Rights Organisations Against Brutal Crackdown in Evin Prison
43 human rights activists and human rights and women’s rights organisation heads have signed a joint statement in solidarity with the women political prisoners in Tehran’s Evin Prison whose protest against the execution of protester Reza Rasaei was brutally repressed. “As human rights activists, we stand in solidarity with the women of Iran and demand an independent international investigation!”
“Political prisoners are being brutally repressed in the women’s ward of Iran’s Evin Prison. As human rights activists, we stand in solidarity with the women of Iran and demand an independent international investigation!
We the undersigned, as human rights activists dedicated to gender equality and the rule of law, are deeply alarmed by the reports now emerging from the women’s ward of Iran’s Evin Prison.
Around 70 women of all different beliefs, affiliations, and generations are currently being held as political prisoners in Evin, Iran’s most notorious prison. These women have been arrested and unjustly detained solely because they have fought for freedom and human rights in Iran. The prisoners being held in the women’s ward have now come forward with accounts of brutal violence meted out by their jailers and by Iranian security forces, who stormed the ward on August 6th. We see no reason to doubt their version of events, and we and our organizations stand in unwavering solidarity with these women, alongside the activists and ordinary citizens who tirelessly champion their cause.
According to the information we have received, which has been duly verified and corroborated by several independent media outlets, several political prisoners were violently assaulted and beaten by guards and security agents as they protested the execution of Reza (Gholamreza) Rasaei that morning. Rasaei, a protestor during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, was put to death in secret at dawn on August 6th, without his family or his lawyer being notified. His execution came after he had already been subjected to torture in order to extract forced confessions.
This unprecedented act of repression occurred while the women were peacefully gathered in the prison courtyard, exercising their freedom of expression by chanting slogans demanding the abolition of the death penalty and an immediate halt to executions.
The women’s gathering that day followed a series of prior demonstrations by the women of the ward, sometimes at their own initiative and sometimes in support of other efforts to mobilize, to demand the annulment of the death sentences handed down to their fellow inmate Pakhshan Azizi – an Iranian Kurdish journalist – as well as three other women: labor activist Sharifeh Mohammadi, women’s rights activist Varisheh Moradi, and Nassim Gholami Simiari.
Due to the severity of the attack and the injuries inflicted, several of these prisoners lost consciousness during the assault, while others were placed in splints after a summary examination by the prison doctor but were denied adequate care. Even in the most severe cases, the authorities prevented any transfer of prisoners to an external hospital, depriving these women of the appropriate medical treatments they urgently needed.
Upon regaining consciousness, these female prisoners – no less determined and resolute – immediately declared their intention to file legal complaints against their jailers, thus seeking to ensure that no abuse would go unpunished.
In a context of intensified internal repression targeting Iranian human rights activists and political dissidents, we are alarmed by the acceleration of executions, which reached their gruesome peak when 29 people were killed on August 7th – including 26 in a collective execution at Gesel Hasar Prison in the city of Karaj.
Out of the public eye, and while media attention focuses on the talk of war and the escalating tensions in the Middle East, the Islamic Republic of Iran continues its main war, one it launched decades ago: the war against its opponents and on Iranian women writ large.
As human rights activists, we express our full solidarity with all the women who put their lives on the line in the fight for peace, democracy, and the rule of law in Iran.
Now more than ever, the women’s ward at Evin has asserted itself as the bastion of resistance in Iran’s struggle for freedom. The women unjustly and illegally held as political prisoners in Iran command our admiration, and it is incumbent on us to mobilize on their behalf.
As such, and in solidarity with all the women and men who continue to risk their lives to fight for the rule of law and for peace and democracy in Iran, we and our organizations demand:
- An immediate stop to Iran’s use of the death penalty, which is an inhuman and degrading punishment, in line with our commitment to the universal abolition of the death penalty;
- The release of all arbitrarily detained political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, and the cessation of judicial proceedings which violate their rights to legal defense and to a fair trial;
- The immediate implementation of measures by the Iranian state to guarantee the physical and psychological safety of detainees under its custody throughout the country, particularly in the women’s ward at Evin Prison; and
- The implementation of an independent, international criminal investigation to fully uncover the truth about the acts of violence committed against the political prisoners in Evin Prison; these charges must be duly received by the Iranian authorities.”
Signatories:
Narges Foundation (France), Shirin Ebadi, prix Nobel de la paix (Royaume-Uni) ; Pierre Haski, Reporters sans frontières (France) ; Vibe Klarup, Amnesty international Denmark (Danemark) ; Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) (Norvège) ; Chirinne Ardakani, Iran Justice (France) ; Düzen Tekkal et Mariam Claren, Hawar Help (Germany) ; Rose Parris Richter, Impact Iran (Suisse) ; Hadi Ghaemi, Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) (Etats-Unis) ; Pen international (Royaume-Uni) ; Stefan Löfven, The Olof Palme Memorial Fund, Olof Palmes Minnesfond (Suède) ; Raphaël Chenuil-Hazan, Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM) (France) ; Hamid Cyrus, Médecins sans frontières (Autriche) ; Karim Lahidji, Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme (FIDH) (France) ; End Gender apartheid Campaign (Etats-Unis) ; Maria Søndergaard, Danish Women’s Society (Danemark) ; Christine Stufferin, Alexander Langer Foundation (Italie) ; Elisabeth Nicoli, Alliance des femmes pour la démocratie (AFD) (France) ; Roya Boroumand, Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran (Etats-Unis) ; Rebin Rahmani, Kurdistan Human Rights Network (France) ; Fariba Ehsan, Asociación Irani Pro Derechos Humanos (Espagne) ; Rezvan Moghadam, Stop honor killings (Etats-Unis) ; Shahin Helali Khyavi, Association for the Human Rights of the Azerbaijani People in Iran (AHRAZ) (Norvège) ; Gabriele Nissim, Gariwo (Italie) ; Darya Djavahery-Farsi, Neda d’Iran(France) ; Negin Khazaee and Rene Kassie, Queers and Feminists for Iran Liberation (France et Canada) ; Karin Deutsch Karlekar, Pen American (Etats-Unis) ; Moein Arjomand, Baloch Activists Campaign (Royaume-Uni) ; Taimoor Aliassi, Kurdistan Human Rights Association-Geneva (KMMK-G) (Suisse) ; Emma Dinparast, Azadi 4 Iran (France) ; Reza Ghazinouri, United for Iran (Etats-Unis) ; Hassan Nayeb Hashem, All Human Rights for All in Iran (Suisse) ; Shima Silavi, Ahwaz Human Rights Organization (Belgique) ; Hirbod Deghani-Azar, Norouz(France) ; Balochistan Human rights group (Suède) ; Faramarz Bahar, Comité indépendant contre la répression des citoyens iraniens Paris (France) ; Collectif Alborz FVL(France) ; Collectif Phénix (France) ; PEN Sweden (Suède) ; Jaleh Tabrizi, Association for human rights of azerbaijanis in Iran (Arcdh) (France) ; Aban families for justice ; Masoud Raeisi, Rasank ; Zohreh Habibmohammadi, Collectif BA MA (France).
(source for all: iranhr.net)
Alarming Surge in Executions—-87 Executions Reported after June Elections, including 29 in 1 Day
Iranian authorities have reportedly executed at least 87 people in the month after the presidential elections in late June, 2024, Human Rights Watch said today. Among those executed was Reza (Gholamreza) Rasaei, a Kurdish man arrested during the 2022 nationwide “Women, Life, Freedom” protests that followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini in custody.
The nongovernmental group Iran Human Rights reported that in addition to the spate of post-election executions, on the morning of August 7 the authorities carried out mass executions of 29 prisoners at 2 prisons. 26 people were executed at Ghezel Hesar Prison and 3 people at Karaj Central Prison. Those executed included 17 people sentenced for “premeditated murder,” 7 convicted on drug-related charges, and 2 Afghan nationals sentenced for “rape.” Human Rights Watch has for many years documented serious due process violations and unfair trials in Iranian courts.
“The Iranian authorities are carrying out an egregious execution spree while trumpeting their recent presidential elections as evidence of genuine change,” said Nahid Naghshbandi, acting Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “For those campaign slogans to be meaningful, Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, should urgently intervene to overturn existing death sentences, place a moratorium on capital punishment, and take steps to reform the judiciary.”
The Iranian government has long made extensive use of the death penalty, including in response to protests in which those prosecuted and executed were exercising their fundamental rights to free expression and peaceful assembly. Human Rights Watch opposes the use of the death penalty in all circ*mstances because of its inherent cruelty. The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported that the authorities executed Rasaei on August 6 at Dizelabad prison in Kermanshah without prior notice to his family or a final meeting with them. Rasaei, 34, was a member of the Yarsan religious minority group from Sahneh in Kermanshah province. Rasaei was arrested on November 24, 2022, in Shahriar, Tehran, and transferred to Dizelabad prison after his interrogation.
He was sentenced to death for his alleged role in the “premeditated murder” of Nader Birami, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organization in Sahneh. The sentence was confirmed on October 7, 2023, after the Supreme Court rejected Rasaei’s request for a retrial.
On August 6, the women’s ward of Evin prison, which has been taking part in the “No to Executions” protest campaign for months, held further demonstrations following Rasaei’s execution, BBC Persian reported. Prison security personnel responded assaulting the protesting women, with reports indicating that the security personnel beat and injured many of the prisoners, some of whom suffered mental health effects. Among those injured was the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, whom security personnel struck several times in the chest, the group said. Mohammadi suffered a respiratory attack and severe chest pain, causing her to collapse in the prison yard.
Iranian authorities have sentenced to death many ethnic and religious minorities in recent months. HRANA reported on August 8 that the Supreme Court confirmed the death sentences of 6 political prisoners in Vakilabad prison, in the city of Mashhad. HRANA said that the Mashhad Revolutionary Court in July 2023 convicted Malek Ali Fadaei-Nasab, Farhad Shakeri, Isa Eidmohammadi, Abdolhakim Azim Gorgij, Abdolrahman Gorgij, and Taj Mohammad Khormali of “armed rebellion” for their alleged membership in the Salafi group Hizb al-Furqan and the National Solidarity Front of Iranian Sunnis. On July 4, Iran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced a labor activist, Sharifeh Mohammadi, to death on a charge of “armed rebellion against the state,” based on an alleged membership in an opposition group. HRANA reported that on July 23, Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish political prisoner, to death for alleged membership in opposition groups.
The authorities had arrested Azizi, originally from Mahabad, in Tehran on August 4, 2023, and held her in Ward 209 of Evin prison, HRANA reported. They denied her access to a lawyer and family visits for four months before transferring her to the women’s ward. Azizi, who has a history of arrests, was previously detained in 2009 for 4 months before being released on bail. Another Kurdish political activist, Warisha Moradi, who faces charges of “armed rebellion against the state,” did not attend her own trial on August 4, Radio Zamaneh reported. In a letter from Evin prison, she said that she would not participate in the court proceedings in solidarity with death row prisoners Mohammadi and Azizi. She said, “I do not recognize a court that fails to deliver fair judgments. I have been accused of armed rebellion simply for being a woman, a Kurd, and a seeker of a free life.”
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network said that intelligence agents arrested Moradi, a member of the East Kurdistan Free Women Society, on August 1, 2023, in Kermanshah. The network said that she faced pressure and threats to make forced confessions. On December 26, 2023, after 5 months in solitary confinement, she was moved to the women’s ward of Evin prison. She continues to be denied her right to make phone calls and meet with her family, the network said.
Iran Human Rights reported that Iranian authorities executed 249 people in the first 6 months of 2024, with 147 of them sentenced to death on drug-related charges. Amnesty International also reported that Iran was responsible for 74 % of all recorded executions worldwide in 2023, with a total of 853 executions. These executions have disproportionately targeted Iran’s Baluch ethnic minority, who make up only about 5 % of the population but account for 20 % of the recorded executions. Additionally, at least 24 women and 5 people who were children at the time of their alleged crimes were among those executed.
“Iran’s use of the death penalty as a tool of intimidation following unfair trials, particularly against those seeking government reform, reveals a chilling abuse of power,” Naghshbandi said. “Other countries, especially those that engage with Iran, should condemn this inhumane practice and call for an immediate halt to executions.”
(source: Human Rights Watch)
11 Executed in Yazd and Qazvin: Urgent Call to Save Death Row Inmates in Iran
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi: Khamenei seeks to prevent an uprising, but the collapse of this religious fascism by the hands of rebellious youth, and the establishment of democracy, popular sovereignty, and justice, will end these pains and sufferings.
With the inauguration of Khamenei’s new president and the introduction of his cabinet, the regime’s execution machine has intensified. On Monday, August 19, 2024, five prisoners, including Abdulrahman Damani Gorgij and Abdolraouf Shahbakhsh, both Baluch compatriots, were hanged in Yazd Central Prison. On Sunday, August 18, Abbas Aalaei was hanged in Tabriz Central Prison, and on Saturday, August 17, Yousef Kazemzadeh, Ali Salimi, and Haidar Arab were hanged in Adel Abad Prison in Shiraz. Earlier, on Thursday, August 15, Peyman Allah Veisi was hanged in Sanandaj Central Prison. Additionally, 6 prisoners, including two women, were executed in Chubindar Prison in Qazvin in August. Among them were Vahid Ebrahimzadeh, Vahid Sultanabadi, Amirhossein Bagherieh, and Hamid Behmazak.
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, expressed deep sympathy with the victims’ families and added that the two-headed serpent Zahak (a figure from Persian mythology symbolizing tyranny and evil) continues his disgraceful reign, causing more mothers, fathers, wives, and children to mourn each day. The introduction of his new president’s cabinet has only intensified these crimes. However, despite his attempts to prevent an uprising through repression, terrorism, and warmongering, his efforts will fail. The collapse of religious fascism, led by rebellious youth, will bring democracy, popular sovereignty, and justice, ending this suffering.
The Iranian Resistance urgently calls on the UN Human Rights Council and High Commissioner, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, and all human rights advocates to take immediate action to save the lives of prisoners sentenced to death. It also calls for the referral of Iran’s human rights violations to the Security Council and bringing Ali Khamenei and other regime leaders to justice.
(source: Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) )
Hunger Strike by Hundreds of Prisoners in 18 Prisons in the Campaign ‘Tuesdays Against Execution’
On Tuesday, August 20, 2024, hundreds of prisoners in 18 prisons across Iran went on a hunger strike in protest against execution as an inhumane punishment. This comes as the judiciary in Iran has executed over 400 prisoners in Iranian prisons since the beginning of the year 2024. In just the first 15 days of August, 70 prisoners have been hanged in Iranian prisons.
The protest strike of prisoners in Iranian prisons under the campaign ‘Tuesdays Against Execution’ has been ongoing since February 2024. According to a statement released today by participating prisoners, this campaign has entered its thirtieth consecutive week starting this Tyesday, August 20, in prisons such as Evin (Wards 3, 4, 6, and 8), Ghezel hesar (Units 3 and 4), Karaj Central, Khorramabad, Nezam Shiraz, Mashhad, Qaemshahr, Lakan Rasht (female and male wards), Tabriz, Ardabil, Khoy, Naqadeh, Urmia, Salmas, Saqqez, Baneh, Marivan, and Kamyaran.
The protest strike of prisoners in Iranian prisons under the campaign ‘Tuesdays Against Execution’ has been ongoing since February 2024. According to a statement released today by participating prisoners, this campaign has entered its thirtieth consecutive week starting this Tyesday, August 20, in prisons such as Evin (Wards 3, 4, 6, and 8), Ghezel hesar (Units 3 and 4), Karaj Central, Khorramabad, Nezam Shiraz, Mashhad, Qaemshahr, Lakan Rasht (female and male wards), Tabriz, Ardabil, Khoy, Naqadeh, Urmia, Salmas, Saqqez, Baneh, Marivan, and Kamyaran.
The campaign ‘Tuesdays Against Execution’ in prisons, which today is accompanied by a hunger strike by hundreds of prisoners in Iranian prisons, has been from the beginning in opposition and protest against the death penalty as an inhumane punishment, independent of the type of accusation or the motives and beliefs of the condemned, and has set as its goal the abolition of this inhumane punishment.
Excerpt from the statement of the striking prisoners on August 20, 2024: The continuous and expanding nature of this campaign is occurring while the judicial and security authorities of the “execution government” have hanged more than 310 individuals from the beginning of the Iranian year 1403 until now.
“This indicates that the agents of despotism have systematically found their solution to all crises within the confines of the gallows, carrying out their ‘harsh revenge’ by ‘execution’ on the sons and daughters of this land. The additional statement from the striking prisoners reads: “To confront and prevent the continuation of executions, we urge everyone to stand up in any way possible and support the prisoners in this struggle and resistance that has begun from within the prisons.”
The striking prisoners have called for special attention from the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Ms. My Satu, to the inhumane actions, especially executions, in Iran and efforts towards stopping executions and ending this inhumane situation in Iran. The judiciary in Iran continues to extensively employ execution as the most ruthless and inhumane form of punishment. The number of executions in the past calendar year in Iran reached 850 individuals.
(source: iran-hrm.com)
