Category Archives: Capital punishment

Florida kills 77-year-old man in state’s 18th execution of year

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Vietnam veteran William Reaves executed by lethal injection despite letter from fellow veterans urging halt

Florida carried out its 18th execution of the year on Tuesday under Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s aggressive use of the death penalty in his final term.

William Reaves, 77, was pronounced dead at 6.12pm following a three-drug injection at Florida state prison near Starke. He was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1986 shooting death of Indian River county deputy Richard Raczkowski.

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Saudi Arabia to execute man for being at protests and funerals when he was 15

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Use of death penalty against people for crimes committed when they were children a ‘new low’, say rights groups

A young man faces imminent execution in Saudi Arabia for attending protests and funerals when he was aged 15 to 17, say human rights groups, in the latest example of the kingdom’s surging use of the death penalty for non-violent crimes.

Youssef al-Manasif was arrested in 2017 and accused of crimes including joining demonstrations for religious freedom by the Shia minority and attending funerals that the Saudi authorities deem to be protests. He was convicted and sentenced to death by the specialised criminal court, a secretive tribunal set up for terrorism-related cases.

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Iranian woman handed death sentence for ‘blasphemy’ in social media post

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Rights groups warn of Tehran regime’s increasing use of executions to suppress dissent, with at least 600 this year

Human rights groups have raised the alarm over the growing number of death sentences and executions in Iran, after reports that a 23-year-old woman, Najmeh Amini, has been sentenced to death for blasphemy over a social-media post.

Amini, an accounting student, is being held in Vakilabad prison in the north-east city of Mashhad. She has been sentenced to more than 12 years in prison and death in separate cases heard by a revolutionary and a criminal court.

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Julie Inman Grant may be able to limit Australians seeing a livestreamed US execution – but it could start a diplomatic incident

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A history of tech giant legal challenges and US political criticism shows there’s no easy solution for the eSafety commissioner

Australia’s online safety regulator has a few levers to limit the public seeing the US’s planned livestream of an execution, but history suggests it will lead to a very public fight.

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced last week the planned execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan would be livestreamed when the military execution is carried out in early December.

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Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream execution puts US in dubious company

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Only Iran and Afghanistan routinely carry out sentences in public, with Saudi Arabia appearing to have ended practice

If the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, goes ahead with plans to livestream the execution of a soldier radicalised to extremist Islam who killed 13 people at a military base in Texas, his country will join a motley assembly of lesser powers and rogue actors who have conducted public executions in recent years.

Only two countries currently systematically carry out capital sentences in public: Iran and Afghanistan. In 2025, the Taliban authorities carried out six such killings and the regime in Tehran 11, according to Amnesty International.

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Execution live stream could cause PTSD in viewers, say psychiatrists

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Warning follows Pete Hegseth announcement that firing squad execution of Fort Hood killer will be public

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Livestreaming an execution could cause post-traumatic stress disorder in the viewing public, mental health experts have said, after the US confirmed plans to broadcast the death by firing squad of a man who shot dead 13 unarmed soldiers.

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said on Thursday that Nidal Hasan, a former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, would be executed by firing squad on 3 December. Officials later confirmed it would be livestreamed. It is believed it will be the first public execution in the US in almost a century.

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Tennessee suspends executions as Christa Pike’s lawyer says failed lethal injection leaves her in critical condition

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Independent inquiry ordered after failed execution of Pike, who was convicted of 1994 murder

Tennessee’s governor on Thursday said it was “deeply disturbing” that his state botched the execution of a death row prisoner who remained alive and snoring 40 minutes after receiving a double dose of the lethal drug that should have quickly killed her.

Bill Lee, a Republican, has suspended all executions in the state until at least the end of the year and ordered an independent inquiry after Wednesday night’s failed attempt to put to death Christa Pike, who was convicted of murder, at the execution chamber in Nashville.

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Tennessee woman ‘snoring’ and still alive as execution halted, witnesses say

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Christa Pike, sentenced to death over 1995 murder, was heard snoring 40 minutes after lethal doses administered, witnesses said

Tennessee officials were unable to carry out the execution of Christa Pike, media witnesses said Wednesday, despite her being administered two doses of a lethal injection drug.

In a press conference, media witnesses described hearing Pike snore 40 minutes after she was administered two doses of pentobarbital. An ambulance pulled up to Riverbend maximum security institution ahead of the press conference, but Pike’s condition is unclear.

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Utah death-row prisoner released after new DNA analysis of 1985 killing

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Douglas Carter, 71, who has spent more than four decades on death row, was released on bail until new trial begins

A Utah man who has spent more than four decades on death row was released from jail after newly analyzed DNA evidence showed that he was not connected to a 1985 homicide.

Douglas Stewart Carter, now 71, walked out of the Utah county jail late on Monday night after a judge ordered his release on bail. He will have to wear a GPS monitoring device until a new trial begins.

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Tennessee to execute a woman for first time in 200 years after governor denies clemency

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Lawyers for Christa Pike, 50, convicted of killing classmate in Knoxville in 1995, ask supreme court to grant stay

Christa Pike was 18 when she killed a classmate in a jealous rage and became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row. Now 50, she is scheduled to be put to death on Wednesday in what would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in 200 years.

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted in the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area where she and her boyfriend tortured and killed Slemmer.

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Family of Iranian twins sentenced to death and decades in jail ask UN for help

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Taraneh and Romina Rahimi were charged with ‘waging war against God’ after joining protests against Tehran regime

The family of 21-year-old twins who have been sentenced respectively to death and decades in jail for protesting against the Iranian regime have appealed to the United Nations for help.

A formal “submission of information” relating to the case of Taraneh and Romina Rahimi has been submitted by British human right lawyers on their family’s behalf.

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Texas executes death-row prisoner over 2005 triple killing

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Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, died by lethal injection, the sixth person to be executed by Texas officials this year

A man found guilty of fatally shooting three people during a 2005 attempted robbery at a rural Texas home was executed Wednesday, a week after the other man convicted in the killings was put to death.

Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, died by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He is the sixth person executed so far this year in Texas, with three more people scheduled over the next two months.

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Texas kills man by lethal injection in state’s fifth execution this year

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LeJames Norman, 40, killed at Huntsville penitentiary while scheduled execution in Georgia halted by judge

A man convicted over the shooting deaths of three people was executed on Wednesday in Texas, while another execution scheduled for the same time in Georgia was halted by a judge.

It’s the fifth execution in Texas this year. Georgia has yet to put anyone to death this year. The nation’s busiest death chamber is in Florida, which accounted for more than half the 25 executions already carried out in the US this year.

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Florida to carry out its 13th execution this year in US’s busiest death chamber

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US supreme court declined to halt execution of William Frances Silvia, and state has two executions next month

A Florida man convicted of fatally shooting his estranged wife and wounding his mother-in-law is set to be executed on Tuesday, continuing the state’s aggressive use of the death penalty in Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s final term.

William Frances Silvia, 61, would be the 13th prisoner put to death this year in Florida, which has two more executions scheduled in September and has carried out more than half the US’s 22 executions so far in 2026.

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Three men executed on same day in US for the first time in 15 years

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Rare scheduling in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Alabama underlines the renewed appetite in US for state killings

Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was put to death by the state of Oklahoma, in the first of three executions scheduled for Thursday in a rare triple procedure that underlines the renewed appetite in the US for state killings.

Just one hour later, Darrell Hines was put to death by the state of Tennessee, and at 6pm local time in Alabama, that state executed Jeremy Williams.

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Death by firing squad: archaic method on the rise in US as Idaho opens new execution chamber

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Supporters of the method say it’s foolproof – but forensic experts say it can be ‘excruciating’ amid allegations it’s been intentionally botched

The tangled path of US capital punishment takes a new turn on Wednesday as Idaho becomes the first state to adopt the firing squad as its primary form of execution, embracing the brutal killing technique even as concerns grow that it can inflict excruciating pain and suffering.

The state’s department of corrections (IDOC) says it has met its deadline, set by the legislature, to have its death chamber at a maximum security prison south of Boise retrofitted and open for business by 1 July. It has spent more than $1m in the venture, including $24,000 on a rack of AR-style, .308-caliber, scoped rifles that will be wielded by volunteer marksmen.

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Israeli MPs back special tribunal with death penalty powers for alleged 7 October attackers

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Knesset approves plan for livestreamed trials in military court, which has drawn comparisons to Eichmann trial

Israeli lawmakers have approved setting up a livestreamed special tribunal with the power to sentence to death Palestinians convicted of taking part in the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 that triggered the war in Gaza.

The measure was passed by 93 votes to none in the 120-seat Knesset, Israel’s parliament, reflecting widespread support among Israel’s Jewish majority for punishing those found responsible for the deadliest single attack in Israel’s history. The remaining 27 lawmakers were absent or abstained from voting.

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Iran executes three men in relation to January anti-regime protests

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Hangings are latest in wave of near-daily killings as authorities seek to instil fear amid war with US and Israel

Iran has executed three men charged in connection with political protests this January, authorities have said, the latest in a wave of hangings against the backdrop of the war against the US and Israel.

Iranian authorities have carried out executions on a near-daily basis in recent weeks in what activists have denounced as a bid to instil fear in society at a time of international and domestic tension.

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Hanged under the cover of war: letters and videos tell stories of Iran’s death row victims

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Testimony emerges from Babak Alipour, who spent three years on death row before being taken to gallows in March

Writing from his cell in the Rajai Shahr prison in the northern Iranian city of Karaj, Babak Alipour wanted to tell his friends about those who had already gone to their execution.

There was Behrouz Ehsani, 69, the elder statesman of the group, who was “never angry” about their predicament. Then there was Mehdi Hassani, a 48-year-old father of three who he saw a couple of times in the prison hospital and who would ask him to pass on to the children the message that he was “fine”.

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Israel passes law to give death penalty to Palestinians convicted of lethal attacks

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Knesset approves measure that has been criticised by European countries and rights groups

Israel’s parliament has passed a law imposing the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of fatal attacks, a measure sharply criticised as discriminatory by European countries and rights groups.

The legislation makes the death penalty the default punishment for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank found guilty of intentionally carrying out deadly attacks deemed acts of terrorism by a military court.

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