Category Archives: Capital punishment

Iran’s death sentence for rapper sparks protests and undermines criticism of US

Posted on by

Regime’s effort to exploit US campus crackdown damaged by treatment of Toomaj Salehi

An Iranian court’s decision to pass the death sentence against Toomaj Salehi, a popular Iranian rapper and regime opponent, has led to international protests and damaged Iran’s fledgling efforts to exploit crackdowns on unrest in US university campuses over Gaza as an abuse of human rights.

Crowds gathered in the US, Europe and Canada on Sunday to support Salehi, while dozens of political prisoners in Iran’s Ghezel Hesar prison issued a statement condemning the death sentence, calling it “the culmination of gross human rights violations in Iran”. Salehi has also won the support of major US rappers, as well as human rights groups.

Continue reading...

Rise in US executions masks deep divide between states on use of death penalty

Posted on by

Some of the 27 states that have the death penalty have not executed anyone in years but others still do – and the divide is rooted in history

The execution of Brian Dorsey in Missouri on Tuesday, despite an extraordinary campaign asking for his sentence to be commuted, brought into focus the issue of the death penalty in the US – one of the few countries in the western world that still uses corporal punishment.

Dorsey, 52, was executed for the 2006 murders of his cousin and her husband, after the number of people executed in the US rose to 24 in 2023, from 18 in 2022.

Continue reading...

Missouri death row inmate executed despite widespread calls for clemency

Posted on by

Brian Dorsey, convicted of murdering his cousin and her husband, put to death amid efforts by many to have his sentence commuted

Brian Dorsey, who was convicted of murdering his cousin and her husband in 2006, was executed in Missouri’s Bonne Terre state prison Tuesday despite an extraordinary effort by corrections officials and his appeals judge to have his capital sentence commuted.

Prison officials confirmed that Dorsey had been put to death by lethal injection. They said he had been pronounced dead at 6.11pm.

Continue reading...

Missouri death row inmate’s attorneys ask supreme court to block execution

Posted on by

Petition argues that Brian Dorsey is fully rehabilitated and that execution would violate eighth amendment

Attorneys for a Missouri death row inmate have asked the US supreme court to block an execution sentence from going ahead on Tuesday, following a petition for clemency from more than 70 correctional officers and a letter from the inmate’s appeals court judge.

The petition – a writ of certiorari – asks the court to spare Brian Dorsey’s life in favor of a life without parole sentence based on grounds that he is fully rehabilitated and therefore execution would be counter to the eighth amendment constitutional ban against punishments which serve no deterrent or rehabilitation purpose.

Continue reading...

More than 150 people call on Missouri governor to forgive Brian Dorsey’s death penalty

Posted on by

Prison guards, judges, jurors and prison workers have beseeched Mike Parson to commute capital punishment to life without parole

With less than a week until Brian Dorsey is scheduled to be executed at Potosi correctional center in Missouri for the 2006 killings of his cousin and her husband, an extraordinary effort is underway to have the 52-year-old’s capital sentence commuted to life without parole.

More than 150 people have called on the Missouri governor Mike Parson to commute Dorsey’s punishment – including more than 70 current and former prison workers, many of whom got to know Doresy behind bars, Republican state representatives, jurors and even the appeals judge who upheld Dorsey’s conviction and death sentence in 2009.

Continue reading...

Taliban edict to resume stoning women to death met with horror

Posted on by

Afghan regime’s return to public stoning and flogging is because there is ‘no one to hold them accountable’ for abuses, say activists

The Taliban’s announcement that it is resuming publicly stoning women to death has been enabled by the international community’s silence, human rights groups have said.

Safia Arefi, a lawyer and head of the Afghan human rights organisation Women’s Window of Hope, said the announcement had condemned Afghan women to return to the darkest days of Taliban rule in the 1990s.

Continue reading...

Alabama inmate executed with nitrogen gas was ‘shaking violently’ for 22 minutes, witnesses say

Posted on by

White House calls death of Kenneth Smith, executed via untested method lawyers say was cruel and unusual, ‘very troubling’

Alabama has carried out the first execution of a death row prisoner in the US using nitrogen gas, an untested procedure which the prisoner’s lawyers had argued amounted to a form of cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution.

Kenneth Smith, 58, was pronounced dead at 8.25pm on Thursday evening at an Alabama prison after breathing pure nitrogen gas through a face mask to cause oxygen deprivation. The execution took about 22 minutes.

Continue reading...

Canadian firm under fire for supplying equipment for Alabama execution

Posted on by

Private equity firm Onex Corp partly owns company that makes mask for use in untested nitrogen hypoxia execution method

A Canadian company is facing criticism for allegedly supplying the equipment for a state execution in the United States, in a case that has drawn outrage for the reliance on a seemingly untested method of execution.

On Thursday, Alabama plans to kill inmate Kenneth Smith by suffocating him with nitrogen gas, a method never before used in the country.

Continue reading...

‘I’m not ready, brother’: US man to be put to death months after botched execution attempt

Posted on by

Kenneth Smith, to be executed in Alabama by untested gas method, tells Guardian of nightmares from failed lethal injection

On Tuesday morning, Kenneth Smith will be moved within the Holman correctional facility in Alabama to the “death cell”, the bluntly named holding unit where condemned prisoners are placed two days before their appointed execution.

Smith knows the cell well. He knows its dimensions and the feel of the place. He knows that it sits only about 20 feet from the death chamber where, barring a last-minute reprieve, he will be escorted in handcuffs and leg irons on Thursday before being strapped to a gurney to await his fate.

Continue reading...

Alarm as Alabama man to be executed via gas method rejected by veterinarians

Posted on by

Death row prisoner Kenneth Smith, 58, to be killed via nitrogen-gas procedure animal scientists have ruled out for ethical reasons

Alabama is preparing to execute a death row inmate using nitrogen gas, an experimental method that veterinarians in the US and across Europe have deemed unacceptable as a form of euthanasia for most animals.

Barring last-minute appeals, Kenneth Smith, 58, is scheduled to be judicially killed on 25 January using a previously untested technique. Alabama’s department of corrections is proposing to strap him to a gurney, apply a respirator mask to his face, then force him to breathe pure nitrogen which would cause oxygen deprivation and death.

Continue reading...

Iran says it executed four people it claims engaged in ‘sabotage’ for Israel

Posted on by

Three men and one woman hanged on charges of ‘moharebeh’ – or waging war against God

Iran has announced it has hanged four people it claims were engaged in “sabotage” on behalf of Israel.

They were executed in Iran’s north-west province of West Azerbaijan, the judiciary’s Mizan website reported.

Continue reading...

US man formerly on death row freed after murder charges dismissed

Posted on by

Noel Montalvo was in Pennsylvania prison for 20 years for murders that he blamed on his brother who died in prison

A man formerly on death row has been released from prison following dismissal of murder charges in a double slaying a quarter-century ago that he blamed on his brother, who died in prison while appealing his own death sentence in the case.

Noel Montalvo, who turned 59 on Tuesday, was freed on Monday night after York county, Pennsylvania, prosecutors dismissed charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy and burglary shortly before a retrial was to begin. He pleaded guilty to an evidence tampering charge for which the judge sentenced him to a year of probation.

Continue reading...

Florida’s revival of death penalty fuels rise in US executions in 2023

Posted on by

Governor Ron DeSantis scheduled six of the country’s 25 executions this year amid his presidential election bid

The US saw a rise in executions in 2023 as a result of Florida’s revival of the death penalty, amid Ron DeSantis’s “tough on crime” campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

DeSantis scheduled six executions this year – the first time the state has judicially killed people since 2019 and the largest number in almost a decade. Florida also handed down five new death sentences this year, more than any other state.

Continue reading...

Oklahoma executes man who claimed he killed two in self-defense

Posted on by

Phillip Dean Hancock killed by lethal injection after Republican governor declines to commute sentence despite recommendation

Oklahoma executed a man on Thursday who claimed he acted in self-defense when he shot and killed two men in Oklahoma City in 2001.

Phillip Dean Hancock, 59, received a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma state penitentiary and was declared dead at 11.29am. His execution went forward once the Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, declined to commute his sentence, despite a clemency recommendation from the state’s pardon and parole board.

Continue reading...

Iran execution of child condemned by UN human rights office

Posted on by

Seventeen-year-old Hamidreza Azari was executed along with Milad Zohrevand, 22, as UN agency calls for moratorium on capital punishment

The United Nations said Tuesday it deplored the executions of a 17-year-old and a 22-year old in Iran and urged Tehran to immediately stop applying the death penalty.

The UN Human Rights Office said it was troubled by Friday’s executions. “The execution of Hamidreza Azari, who was accused of murder, is the first reported execution of an alleged child offender in Iran this year,” spokesperson Elizabeth Throssell said in a statement.

Continue reading...

Louisiana denies clemency hearings to five death row prisoners

Posted on by

There was a rush to hold hearings before the anti-death penalty governor, John Bel Edwards, leaves office in January

The Louisiana state board of pardons has voted against granting clemency hearings to five Louisiana death row prisoners, effectively ending a campaign to hold hearings for 55 death row inmates before the state’s anti-death penalty governor, John Bel Edwards, steps down in January.

On Friday, the four-member panel sitting in Baton Rouge denied the hearings to four people on a split vote, and by a majority to a fifth, Winthrop Earl Eaton, who was convicted in the 1985 killing of a Louisiana pastor, on the grounds that he is unlikely to be executed because he is mentally incompetent.

Continue reading...

Nun accuses Louisiana of blocking death row clemency appeals in lawsuit

Posted on by

Sister Helen Prejean, known for 1995 film Dead Man Walking, accues board of pardons of breaking state’s public meetings law

Sister Helen Prejean, the Catholic nun and anti-death penalty advocate, is accusing Louisiana’s board of pardons of breaking the state’s public meetings law to effectively delay clemency petitions for death row inmates.

The action pits the 84-year-old sister, who came to prominence as the author of the book behind the 1995 film Dead Man Walking, against Louisiana’s far-right attorney general, Jeff Landry. Landry is part of a legal effort seeking to block the pardon board from hearing mass clemency petitions.

Continue reading...

‘Astonishingly cruel’: Alabama seeks to test execution method on death row ‘guinea pig’

Posted on by

Nine months after Kenneth Smith’s botched lethal injection, state attorney general has asked for approval to kill him with nitrogen

Kenneth Smith is one of two living Americans who can describe what it is like to survive an execution, having endured an aborted lethal injection last November during which he was subjected to excruciating pain tantamount, his lawyers claim, to torture.

Nine months later Smith has been singled out for another undesirable distinction. If the state of Alabama has its way, he will become the test dummy for an execution method that has never before been used in judicial killings and which veterinarians consider unacceptable as a form of euthanasia for animals – death by nitrogen gas.

Continue reading...

Singapore executes man over drugs in third hanging in a week

Posted on by

Punishment for heroin trafficking comes just days after city executes first woman in nearly 20 years

Singapore has executed a 39-year-old man who was convicted of trafficking heroin in the city-state’s third hanging in just over a week, authorities say.

Mohamed Shalleh Adul Latiff was sentenced to death for possessing about 55g of heroin “for the purpose of trafficking” in 2019.

Continue reading...

Singapore executes a woman for first time in almost two decades

Posted on by

Saridewi Djamani was handed a death penalty after being convicted of trafficking 30g of heroin in 2018

Singapore has hanged Saridewi Djamani, the first woman to be executed in the city state in almost 20 years, amid an outcry from human rights groups.

The 45-year-old Singaporean national, who was sentenced to death in 2018 for trafficking about 30g of heroin, was executed early on Friday, the Central Narcotics Bureau said.

Continue reading...