Category Archives: Capital punishment

Utah to use pentobarbital to execute man instead of three-drug combination

Posted on by

Defense attorneys said the use of ketamine, fentanyl and potassium chloride could cause ‘excruciating suffering’

Utah officials said on Saturday that they are scrapping plans to use an untested lethal drug combination in next month’s planned execution of a man in a 1998 murder case. They will instead seek out a drug that’s been used previously in executions in numerous states.

Defense attorneys for Taberon Dave Honie, 49, had sued in state court to stop the use of the drug combination, saying it could cause the defendant “excruciating suffering”.

Continue reading...

German national sentenced to death in Belarus, Berlin confirms

Posted on by

Secretive trial of Rico Krieger, 30, may be linked to Belarusian volunteer unit fighting alongside Ukraine against Russia

A German national has been sentenced to death in Belarus, the German foreign ministry has said, hours after a Belarusian human rights group said a German combat medic had been sentenced to death by firing squad.

The German ministry did not name its national but the Viasna Human Rights Centre said earlier on Friday that Rico Krieger, 30, had been convicted under six articles of Belarus’s criminal code in a trial held at the end of June. It said he had been in custody since November.

Continue reading...

Man who spent 45 years on death row in Japan hopes for chance to clear name

Posted on by

Iwao Hakamada, 88, who spent longer than anyone in the world awaiting execution, awaits murder retrial verdict

In the early hours of 30 June 1966 a fire swept through the home of the managing director of a miso maker in Shizuoka, central Japan. After the fire was put out, police found the bodies of the executive, his wife, and their two teenage children. They had all been stabbed to death.

Iwao Hakamada, who had worked for the firm as a live-in employee, was arrested on suspicion of murdering the family, setting fire to their home and stealing 200,000 yen (£973) in cash. Two years later he was found guilty of murder and arson and sentenced to hang. He maintained innocence throughout his 45 years awaiting execution – the longest any prisoner worldwide has spent on death row.

Continue reading...

Former White House staffer says Trump called for leaker to be executed

Posted on by

Trump’s demand that 2020 leaker be punished with death raises questions about retribution if he is re-elected

Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin has disclosed that Donald Trump repeatedly mused out loud about executing people at several meetings while she worked for him during his presidency.

Griffin’s claim, which she made in a podcast recording with Mediaite released on Friday, is likely to add to concerns that a return for Trump to the Oval Office could be characterized primarily by political retribution.

Continue reading...

Donald Trump had lots of negative opinions about felons. Now he is one.

Posted on by

From roughing up suspects to revoking bail, the 34-count felon has suggested harsh treatment for his fellow criminals

Donald Trump has spent years complaining that American police and the criminal legal system should be “very much tougher”, arguing that some criminals should not be protected by civil liberties, police should rough up suspects and a much wider range of people should face the death penalty for breaking the law.

Now that the former president has been convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, Trump is arguing that the US legal system is out of control. “If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” he said on Friday.

Continue reading...

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...